The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  Looking back, I can hardly bear to think about what the next few hours were like. The cistern system was huge: an endless series of inlets and enormous tanks and nothing better to stop and rest on than the too-low ledges around the endless circular junction rooms. There were two saving graces. There didn't seem to be any animals except for some fish and little turtles. And it glowed, very much like the walls in Arenrhon. Though that worried me immensely, because I suspected it meant I was behind a seal.

  The nanosuit saved me from freezing to death, but the longer I went on the colder and slower and heavier I felt. I soon felt like I'd been swimming my entire life, through an endless maze of dimly glowing rooms, and that I would never be able to stop. Once I started to get really tired, I became convinced that I'd made a mistake in my mapping, or that I'd turned myself around swimming across the larger cisterns, but the numbers I was scratching on the walls, no matter how faintly, reassured me whenever I found one which matched my map. The inlet tunnels were hell – long, low passages that I had to swim down into and get through as quickly as possible and once or twice they were extra long and I'd barely make it, especially when my swimming slowed. I would never have made it through some of them without my nano-flippers. One near the end, my lungs were burning and my vision started to fill with wriggling white squiggles and even when I reached the surface and could finally breathe I felt so tired that the idea of going on seemed impossible and I floated on my back until finally I had to go on or just go under.

  And then there was a current of water. Warm water.

  I stopped in the middle of the cistern I was swimming across, brought alive by the sheer difference of it. A current of warm water. I swam toward it, of course, and followed another inlet and found myself in a small square room with very warm water pouring down from above and – joy – a way up.

  I was stupid, too tired and soaked to think of more than standing in that stream of glorious warmth and then climbing straight up. It was almost like a spiral stair made of blocks, with warm water flowing down it, and way too slick for my first effort. I was only halfway up when I slipped, and was rewarded with a bad smack on the side of my head and a bruised side in return for my haste. The second time, I made ridges for traction on the surface of my suit and inched my way up until I found a round metal grate which miraculously could be lifted out of the way so I could oh-so-carefully ease myself through.

  It was a bath house, vaguely Roman-style, about twice the size of my bedroom back home. The water was coming from a sunken pool in the middle of the room, which was being made to overflow by a constantly pouring flood coming through an ornately carved hole in the wall. There were big double doors – closed – leading out.

  I was so tired I couldn't stand without shaking, and when I finally managed to do that I went and as quietly as I could moved a green corroded metal thing (maybe a brazier) and wedged it under the handles of the doors. I'm not sure if it would have stopped anything determined to get in, but it would certainly have made a lot of noise and at least given me a chance to try and throw myself back into the cisterns.

  Standing in the pool for a few minutes drove away the chill, but after that all I could do was tuck myself into the driest corner of the room, close my eyes and shake. I'd been swimming for over five hours, and was starved and weary beyond imagining. I was too tired to even cry properly, just sat there quivering until I passed out for ten hours straight. No-one came and rescued me, but no Cruzatch showed up either. I had endless nightmares about swimming in the cold and felt battered and starved when I woke up, but at least I could move about without wobbling.

  Then I had to decide what to do. Obviously the Cruzatch hadn't been able to follow me through the water, but exploring would take me away from liquid safety. After all that hellish swimming, I could get halfway down the corridor, run into a horde of Ionoth, and game over.

  Sitting in a bathroom starving to death wasn't that attractive an alternative.

  I had a hot bath while I thought, withdrawing my uniform partially and studying my skin, which had wrinkled amazingly where water had been trapped beneath the nanoliquid. Mara had show me how to block my mission log for privacy – it doesn't stop recording, just means you have to have super-high security clearance to watch the blocked bit – but I don't trust whoever it is with that clearance to not look simply because I've flagged some tiny part of my life as private. And I'd been told not to turn off my mission log while I was technically on mission. Being constantly recorded makes bathroom breaks tremendously embarrassing, but at least my nanosuit helps me be discreet.

  As ready as I could be, I nerved myself to go through those doors.

  The balcony walkway outside was deserted. And cracked, dropping half a foot to my left. There were no Cruzatch in sight, but there was a clear view outside, and I crossed carefully over, hid behind a Pillar, and stared out.

  A mountainside, three mountainsides, with a valley between them covered in white buildings, palatial and grand, with swooping, impossible-looking arches criss-crossing in the air. I could see the sky, but it looked unreal, pearly. Bright enough for daytime, though. I slowly turned my head side to side, keeping behind the Pillar as much as possible in case there was anything out there looking back. My aim was to get a good solid survey into my log and then to look at it in detail somewhere less exposed. I was at the very bottom of the valley, and decided that was a good sign. The cisterns had obviously all been of a level, and I'd climbed up about as much as I'd jumped down from the platform, so I was probably on the right level for that platform. I concentrated on studying the buildings on this lowest level, which were still a large number since the valley had a broad, flat bottom.

  There was plenty of damage. Cracks, and rocks and rubble from higher up which had smashed into buildings. Try as I might, I couldn't decide which direction I'd come from. I'd swum for so long, but had had to keep retracing my steps, and my mapping had gone very skewiff. There were no visible platforms, but I did see that there was a circle of small buildings in the centre of the valley. Pandora's platform had taken me here, and I knew there were other towns with platforms. Since it seemed to be a transport system more than a communication device (got THAT one wrong, Sight talents) then a central circle of them would make a lot of sense, just as Rana Junction is central in Unara. But to check that out, I had to get to the nearest one without anything seeing me.

  It all looked horribly exposed and open. And Cruzatch could fly. As if to underscore that thought, I saw one, drifting slowly up the far mountainside.

  Sliding down out of sight, I reviewed my log of the buildings near me and plotted out a route which took advantage of fallen rubble, shadows, and anything that had overhangs and avoided open patches of ground as much as possible, but really it was all going to come down to luck. Anything that happened to be looking in the right direction would see me easily, even when crawling on my hands and knees as I did getting out of that balcony walkway. Black is not a good fashion choice for sneaking among whitestone buildings.

  I can review my logs and feel silly for the way I peered around every corner and in every direction each time I moved, but it didn't seem remotely foolish at the time. I did see Cruzatch twice, and lay still in whatever spot I was in, ready to run madly if spotted. The closer I got, the more I believed I'd make it, and then I started worrying about what if I got to the buildings and there were no platforms, or if I got to a platform and it didn't take me anywhere.

  But when I reached that central circle of buildings, I hit a bigger snag. Other than some fallen rubble and parched bushes, most of the central space was quite clear and flat. There were fifteen buildings, all facing inwards, some with big double doors opened outwards, some with them sealed. Each set of doors sat at the top of a short flight of stairs behind a few not very concealing Pillars holding up porticos, continuing the vaguely Roman theme. And drifting about the steps of the fifth building to the right were a little clutch of Cruzatch.

  In some ways that was e
ncouraging. There had been a Cruzatch at the platform I'd come through, and a cluster of them suggested they were guarding the area. After a brief peek and an extensive review of my log, I crept around behind the buildings in the opposite direction, aiming for the building which was six buildings away from the Cruzatch cluster. It had open doors, and its angle was good for concealment as I hauled my way up onto the landing at the top of the steps directly from the ground so that I was sheltered by the open door. Then I peered around the door, hoping they would all conveniently face away from me, but it wasn't to be, so I bit my lip, chose a moment, and slipped not too quickly and not too slowly out and then inside.

  Once through the door I ran. I knew that the platform, if it was there, couldn't be too far in, since the buildings weren't that large. And when I had a choice of ramp up or ramp down I took down, since that matched the platforms I'd encountered before.

  I don't think I've ever run faster. I'd seen from the corner of my eye the reaction of the Cruzatch. They'd seen me. If I'd chosen the wrong direction I'd...not be writing this now, I guess. As it was, there was a platform, and I ran up on to it, and I wanted to be anywhere but there, and all the lights went out.

  I sat down hard, panting. The place I was in was hot, and closed in, and too dark for me to make out any shapes at all immediately. The platform was gritty. After a few gulping breaths, I slid to one side, worried about the Cruzatch being able to come after me, but then the Ddura arrived: a new one making the question noise. Not ecstatic, because I wasn't Muinan, but pleased and asking for orders. Head pounding instantly, I laughed, and slid over the side of the platform so I couldn't accidentally teleport anywhere else, and then sat there in the stifling dark and bawled.

  Eventually my eyes adjusted enough to see shades of grey, and I worked out that the entrance corridor was almost completely blocked by sand. After I'd recovered from all the running and crying, I wriggled and dug my way out through the gap near the ceiling, and staggered up into too-bright sunlight.

  My head felt all the better for getting away from the Ddura, but my heart fell the more I looked about me. After all that water, I'd ended up in one of the few desert areas on the planet. The town was almost completely swallowed by a drifting dune, with only a few roofs poking above the sand, and those were well-covered with a scatter of gold. The Tarens had been analysing years of satellite surveys and locating all the 'patterned roof' ruins. I was sure they would have immediately sent ships to the ruins they hadn't already stationed relay drones at, to check whether I'd ended up there. This was not one which was going to be visible from the air.

  My interface still said 'no connection', of course.

  It was baking hot, and dry, and just climbing up to the top of the tallest tower to get a good look around had me dripping with sweat. I converted my nanosuit to a rather scanty arrangement. You can detach bits and they'll hold their form, so I kept my boots – reinforcing them for fear of snakes and scorpions – and made the rest into a thin layer in shorts and tank-top form, with the rest of the nanoliquid in a pad on my back.

  The village seemed to be on the edge of the desert, but the land which wasn't covered in sand was a parched wreck for as far as I could see. At one time it must have been a forest of long, thin trees, but I couldn't see any that looked even remotely alive, and very few that were even upright.

  After that I went inside the top room of the tower and sat in the shade, waiting. I read a book, actually – one of the glories of the interface is that I'll never be short of entertainment while I'm stranded on alien planets, since I've downloaded a few decades of TV and books. It was perhaps early afternoon when I'd arrived, and after a couple of hours the extreme heat let up and I went back up on the roof to take another look.

  I'd been thinking about what to do in between reading. There was no sign of anything green, of any hint of water. Not even cactus. It wasn't a place anyone would last long. But trailing off on a cross-country march in this kind of country would be suicidal. And, more to the point–

  My ankle had been hurting more, and I reconnected my boots to my suit and withdrew my right one to inspect the bruises and burns and cuts. The entire area around them was swollen and flushed red. It didn't look up to a cross-country march.

  I debated trying to use the platform to go back and get to another platform, but the chances of me avoiding any Cruzatch waiting for me was only marginally higher than a snowflake in my current hell. Instead, I relocated to the closest exposed building to all the dead trees, collected some wood, and made a fire. Sounds nuts, I know, and I didn't enjoy doing it, but I knew how much energy fire-lighting took from my attempts at Pandora, so knew I needed to start with it. It was also considerably easier than it was at Pandora – bone-dry wood, I guess. It caught within minutes, and I fed it up into a nice smoky bonfire, one which would last for hours. Then, after a little rest, I began hauling long, thin sapling trunks out onto the sand. Even at full size it didn't look like these trees grew that large, but I focused on the thinner ones because I needed to not exhaust myself lugging serious weight.

  I made an arrow, the biggest arrow I could stand to complete, working until sunset. It was about half a metre thick for its entire length and it felt unbearably long. I was a wreck by the time it was done: covered in sweat, sunburned, limping and parched beyond belief. My ankle hurt so much, I had a raging fever, and struggled to keep myself focused until the sun went down. By then I almost couldn't bring myself to stand up again and limp along the entire length of that huge arrow setting the bushes I'd pinned under the logs alight – getting myself thoroughly smoked along the way.

  I almost lost myself on the way back, too, which is quite a feat when you've built a huge burning arrow to point out the direction. But I started staggering off into the night and stood in the dark for a long time, not sure where I was. Eventually I managed to reorient on my original bonfire and reached the building there, and after that nothing much makes sense in my memories. It was endless nightmares of swimming and running and being trapped and then escaping and Cruzatch everywhere and constantly feeling cold and burning up at the same time. Ducking out of that Cruzatch's reach at the Pillar mixed itself in as well, and I actually remember that more than I used to now.

  I didn't need to remember how afraid I was.

  And then, running through an endless maze with Cheshire monsters always just behind me, I came face to face with Ruuel. He said "Devlin," and lifted one hand and pressed it – the back of his hand – to my cheek. I can remember that really distinctly, how cool his hand felt, and how he said: "You're with us. Stop running."

  I blinked up at him. I was in a bed and could feel his hand against my cheek, and I said: "Thanks," and my log tells me I really did say that (in English), and sounded so completely astonished that it makes me laugh to listen to it. And he looked amused. Just faintly, barely a shift in the line of his mouth, but that's in my log too and it's very hard not to watch it over and over.

  I passed out again, but was spared any more dreams, and next time I had anything resembling a coherent thought I was back in the infirmary at Setari headquarters on Tare, and that was two days ago.

  And, eh, it's taken me all day to write this. I'll pick it up again tomorrow.

  Tuesday, May 6

  Strayed

  From everyone else's point of view, I walked onto the platform at Pandora and vanished. I have to feel sorry for my two greensuit minders, and Jelan Scal, who'd had to report that I'd gone. I'm also rather glad I wasn't assigned to any of the Setari squads when this happened, because I guess it would count as a severe assignment failure.

  So they started a planet-wide search for me. Like I'd thought, they'd assumed I'd been teleported to another village, or possibly to a sealed place like Arenrhon. It was a massive search effort and I'm glad that they treated my being off by myself as an absolute emergency, even though I'd survived perfectly well alone on Muina for a month. The first thing they did was visit the known pattern-roof villages which h
adn't yet had drones planted at them, and put drones there. Then any known settlement. Putting scan and relay drones all over the planet was something they were intending to do anyway, but they brought forward the schedule on it by a factor of ten. Third and Fourth Squads were sent into the Ena to see if Path Sight through the spaces could locate me, and Second and Eleventh Squad were also sent to Muina, since they also have strong Path Sight talents.

  Most of the time of the initial search, I was in the cisterns or asleep in that bathroom. After I woke up, played hide-and-seek across the centre of the city, and made my last-ditch dash for the platform, I'd been missing for nearly seventeen hours. I was just over twenty-four hours gone when I lit up my arrow and passed into fever dreams.

  I'm not sure if my arrow would have been spotted if one of the technicians hadn't noticed that the placement of the pattern-roof villages had its own pattern. It wasn't a precise one, but it seemed that the villages are pretty evenly-spaced across the planet, so there were particular regions that the Tarens were concentrating on searching. And the satellites were looking specifically for fires, even though it seems there are an awful lot of natural fires. A satellite taking a closer look at a dying fire in one of the search regions found that it was, well, an arrow, and everyone celebrated. Arrows mean the same thing on Tare as they do on Earth.

  The nearest ship was sent post-haste to that location: they were over an hour away, and from what I can tell reached me about three hours after sunset.

  Eeli sent me a nice get-well email full of highly vivid descriptions of the drama of the search. Since she's the most powerful of the pathfinders, she'd been very determined to find me herself and it sounds like Taarel had pretty much needed to have her sedated to get her to get some rest during the middle of it all. Third had just returned from a second, very long attempt to locate me through the Ena when the nearest shuttle came within range of my interface and confirmed that I was there. The excitement was dampened by me being non-responsive and in really bad shape – dehydration on top of infection – and then of course they uplifted my log and saw what I'd been doing.