"Ruuel is an excellent captain, a very strong personality, but distant. It works well with Fourth. They are proud of him, strive to live up to him. I know that if he was my captain, I would find it difficult if a friend of mine became his lover. If you are close to them, and he is not distant with you, it changes their relationship with their captain. Don't be too surprised if their initial reaction is a little more than surprise. They'll adapt."
"If they don't?"
Mara gave me a wry smile. "Then they won't be living up to their captain. If nothing else, this should remove some of the pressure they've been under because of The Hidden War. If you are happily bedding Ruuel, there can't be much basis to this villainous Lastier." But she went on more seriously. "Don't underestimate the situation generally, however. Maze was very concerned – he hadn't suspected at all – and since Ruuel is such a strong personality, he was worried about how much of this is really what you want." She snorted. "Zee pointed out that you're the girl who gave him a lecture on how annoying our transparently manipulative psychological tactics were. You're not an aggressive person, but whenever we've come up against things you care about strongly, you've grown unexpectedly firm."
I felt my face burn, and looked away, but said: "Liked Kaoren since he brought back from Earth near-space. He has tried very hard discourage me."
She tousled my hair. "Can't say I'd want to get into bed with a piece of living history either. Now with this next set of stretches, stop bending your knee."
I had medical for the afternoon, so Mara gave me an early break for lunch and of course I ran straight into Mori, who grabbed my hand and dragged me into a corner of the canteen. "I'm feeling very uninformed, Caszandra. Tell me if the rumours are true."
"Which rumour?" I asked, wishing I'd been sensible and eaten in my room.
"The Els Haral and Caszandra Devlin spending lots of time together rumour. We saw you the day we came back from Muina, but no-one bothered till now to let me know there was more to it."
I tried not to look too relieved. "Els chatted to me couple of times at lunch, and gave me very good idea for making projections from memories rather than visualisations."
"There's more to it than that, I bet. I hear he's not hiding his interest."
"Not going to happen," I said, firmly.
She looked tempted to press me more, but Glade, Par and Halla had found us, so Mori settled for murmuring wickedly: "After all, we have it on record that the Third Squad captain is the best looking."
Fortunately Glade was more interested in talking about the various squad pairings, letting me play coward and put off changing the way they treat me. They seemed pretty pleased with how yesterday's rotation went, and no longer quite so worried about being 'junior squad'. First, of course, are easy to work with and Glade was super happy that Mara had complimented him on the way he'd taken down one of the Ionoth. From that conversation I finally learned that Maze and Mara are considered the best hand-to-hand fighters among the Taren Setari, with Kaoren's Sight Sight believed to give him a mild advantage over pure technique.
How Mara puts up with training me I don't know, but I am exceptionally pleased that she and Zee think I'm not a complete pushover, despite my combat failures. I don't think I've ever had a nicer compliment.
I'm in medical now, having the usual scans and another round of cosmetic work on my legs. Fleshy blue bandages for the next few days. And Kaoren wants me to come to his room after the medics are done. He says the door will open to me.
Tuesday, July 15
Cheer Squad
Kaoren was still training when I was let loose from medical, so I footled about for a while, changing clothes and brushing my hair a lot and looking doubtfully at the small amount of makeup I'd been given by Nenna. When I've been out in the city with Zee and Mara and Ketzaren and Alay they've sometimes worn a little makeup, but it's not practical for their day-to-day work. I've been following their lead, but felt like, I don't know, marking the transition I've made, I guess.
Although briefly tempted to see how Kaoren would react to Cass the Goth, I settled for a touch of lip gloss and felt tremendously conspicuous walking down the corridor on Third and Fourth's floor, for all I knew perfectly well both squads were elsewhere. And even though he said he'd added me to his apartment's permissions, I still felt weirdly convinced Kaoren's door wouldn't open to me, until it did.
Kaoren didn't have any active images in the public space of his apartment. Instead he had pictures on the walls, real pictures in deep frames like glassed-in boxes. Inside were little landscapes, cities, forests, all cut out of what looked like stiff white paper, some parts outlined in black or delicate colours but most just white on white. Incredibly complex and beautiful and amazing, with so much detail that you'd need hours to look at a single picture properly. He had four of them and in one, which reminded me a lot of High Forest space, I saw some miniature figures which I realised were Setari.
Deeply impressed, I spent a long time finding other tiny details, then moved on to the rest of the main room. Very tidy, which didn't surprise me at all, with white and blue colours for the furniture, including long, dark blue shelves on the wall without pictures, full of evenly spaced objects. A specked-green stone statue which looked vaguely Mayan. A small, palm-sized curved bowl. A set of thick shiny metal links all joined together like an oversized puzzle ring. A really smooth pebble which looked like it had come from Pandora. An origami crane, the one I'd handed to him in my dream. It was a disjointed collection.
The bedroom and bathroom were very bare and clear by comparison, and I wandered around briefly, then curled up in one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs (they looked very firm, but were wide and deep) and immediately dozed off, and then Kaoren was there looking down at me with his eyes half-closed, as if trying to decide whether to wake me. I held out a hand and he slid into the chair beside me, which just snugly held us both.
I enjoyed the way his expression lightened, as if just sitting down with me lifted his mood, though he went on to say, "You have a slight temperature. A side-effect of the reconstructive work."
"Don't feel that bad," I said. "Bit groggy." I curled my hand around the back of his head and kissed him slowly because I could, because I was allowed to, then said: "I like this room. First time I've seen real pictures on walls since came to Tare. Get lost looking at them."
"My brother creates them for me."
"Good illustration of how little I know about you," I said, sleepily accepting the idea of Kaoren having a brother, though I've had a chance since then to get a bit nervous about meeting any of the Ruuels. "Will you tell me about your family?"
He didn't reply immediately, and I wondered if he didn't want to, but then he started off, voice detached:
"My mother is Teor Ruuel. A sculptor. My father, Paran, a mathematician. I was five and Arden – my brother – six when the Setari program shifted to phase two, and both of us tested as strong talents. Sight is very much a part of the Ruuel bloodline. Our parents did not try to prevent our removal by KOTIS – they would have had little chance of succeeding any legal challenge – but they are very opposed to the concept of Setari. Of 'squandering gifted on futile violence, best left to the untalented'. When we were permitted home visits, we were forbidden to speak of our training."
I was staring up at him, but his eyes were focused on someone not there so I didn't say anything.
"Arden has my Sights, not Speed, and is vastly my superior in Light element. He loathed the program, rebelled in every way. Many Kalrani do, and KOTIS is generally successful in directing that energy more usefully, but Arden's resolution was beyond them and he was allowed to withdraw at eleven. He is becoming increasingly known for his creations."
"He couldn't accept learning to kill?"
Kaoren turned his head to look at the pictures on the walls. "That didn't matter to Arden. He simply considers his time better spent."
"Do you enjoy visit home?" It seemed to me that Kaoren's family was a bad
fit for someone who is so very serious about being a Setari.
"No. I only return now to escort my sister, Siame. She is in her forties, a Kalrani. I want you to meet her, on the free day we have scheduled. She will be painfully jealous of what you are to me, but will try not to show it."
First a brother, and then a sister, one who was going to be jealous. "I'll try not to be–" I paused, thinking about it – and reminding myself that the forties are the mid-teens. "Try not to be threatening."
He let out his breath, a short 'tuh' of amusement, but then kissed me and had an interesting time stopping kissing me, particularly since I don't take a slight temperature nearly as seriously as he did. He'd ordered in food (a selection of spicy goop, hot and cold, with something which could have been naan bread) and after we ate he told me the origins of the seemingly random items on the shelves in the room. Some of them were very unremarkable to look at, but were all about his Sights and the way they felt to him in Place. The way he spoke made me wonder if he'd ever talked about them before.
My blue bandages meant no indulgently long showers, but even a short one was sufficient to convince Kaoren that my temperature was probably not really a concern. I experimented with how he reacted when I tried to take the lead, and found that he'd let me do anything I cared to, but that not being in charge drove him completely insane. It was very fun for me to let him stop passively taking it.
I wonder if Kaoren's parents still think the Setari are a futile waste, now that they've recovered a world.
Wednesday, July 16
Home sweet
First and Fourth were away for a really long time on today's rotation. It's so frustrating to be too valuable to go with them. Instead of finding a way to save the universe, I feel like I'm being packed in cotton wool, just spinning my wheels instead of making any progress. But I guess there's not much I can do about that except work hard during my exercise sessions so they think I'm recovered enough to contribute. No more medical dramas or fainting fits or conjuring things up to hurt me.
As it is, I'm going to have to make sure to start doing something which takes all my attention – like playing my historical mystery games – around the time First and Fourth are due back because I was climbing the walls by the time they finally returned. Zee cancelled my Sights training because she was so tired and had missed when it was supposed to start.
She told me it had been a great success, though, since they'd finally tracked down the home space of those hairy roamers which have been causing all the squads grief since the spaces realigned. One thing I hadn't realised about roamers which originate in spaces, rather than in deep-space, is that if the roamers leave their home space long enough, the space 'remembers' them again. So the numbers can really build up.
Kaoren came and found me almost straight away, which surprised me since he likes to get his report writing out of the way before coming near me and my tendency to kiss him. We found something to eat, and then he began to talk about the roamers' home space, voice his usual detached tone, but his hands moving restlessly, which is very unusual for him.
"They're one of the most unpleasant Ionoth we've encountered. They kill for trophies, and torment and torture the occupants of the spaces they invade. Trap paths. And engage in ritualistic ceremonies which make uncomfortable imprints in Place. Their home space was large and beautiful – orchards, a village apparently woven from thin branches – but so ugly in Place that it was almost impossible to view that way. And it is also like the Castle space – the space is a memory of the occupants of the village being invaded, overwhelmed, driven into the surrounding orchards by a different type of Ionoth. We arrived in the portion of the cycle where the roamers are being pushed out, and instead of engaging with them, we removed the conquerors. There is a strong chance that if we continue to do this during the critical period, they will not roam. It is a rotation which will take at least two squads to achieve, if only to discourage them by force of numbers from attacking us."
"There still roamers from previous cycles out there, yes?"
"More than likely. Even if there are not, the traps they've laid will remain until the spaces revert."
"Be strange for roamers if go back to home space and have fight with themselves," I said. "Can see why Zee so pleased with today's result, though."
"Dual squads are working well for exploration," he said. "Not so well for some of the clearance rotations because two heavy-strength squads are overkill for many spaces, and unless they continually leave one squad a space behind they're encountering the greater numbers of deep-space Ionoth predicted. We've been drawing them, too, but only when we pause too long in the same space."
He tucked me against his side and settled down to work on his reports, which I thought an excellent way to deal with so much of his time having to be devoted to being a squad captain. I don't think it was only for my benefit, either. The roamers' home space was obviously really difficult for him to deal with – he and Halla both study new spaces closely for evaluation purposes – and I think that being with me put some of the nastier aspects at a distance for him.
I spent my time educationally, watching a documentary on seaweed (the source of much of Tare's oxygen, which I had been wondering about given the lack of trees). An entire ocean of seaweed, great heaving masses of it so thick that it heaps up above the water and then gets ripped apart by storms. It's a bit like earth worms – being cut up is a way for it to reproduce.
Taren documentaries are so entertainingly weird, but I really should stop watching them. I still can't sit anywhere near an air duct without picturing that cleaning snot glooping about on the other side. Waiting. And the other day there was one about how the toilets work. They're lined with a nanite similar to the cleaning snot, which engulfs anything in there when the lid closes and moves it away beyond the membrane of goop through pipes all the way to waste recycling. Not only did I not want to hear about what they did with it after that, but they kept comparing the process to what happens to a mouthful of food when you swallow it. Now whenever I put the toilet lid down, I swear I can faintly hear:
Om nom nom nom
Anyway, the seaweed documentary was nearly over when a channel request came from Els, who asked me if I had anything planned for my free day.
I blushed; a silly thing, but Kaoren was right there and it felt so strange to have someone else trying to arrange a date 'right in front of him'. "Els very nice person–" I began, carefully.
He laughed. "I can hear the 'but' already. I improve on further acquaintance, I promise."
"Believe you." I paused and looked up at Kaoren's face, mouth a straight unsmiling line, eyes half-closed, blackly unreadable. "Sorry, but am very in love with someone else."
Els really is a cool guy, and he gracefully said: "Then I can only be envious of that person. We can still chat at lunch, I hope, if that won't make you uncomfortable."
That was fine with me, since I doubted anyone would take seriously rumours about us much longer. I said goodbye to Els, and have spent the next while catching up on this diary entry. I think I'll try projecting some music once Kaoren's reports are done. I've been thinking about recording some classical music for Zan (presuming I can remember what little classical music I've heard – Mum only likes classical in small amounts and I never really paid much attention). Since I haven't done anything much at all today, I'm hoping I might be able to get a good segment of something recorded, and piece it together into a whole over the next few days.
Thursday, July 17
If that's your boyfriend...
I managed almost half of Night on Bald Mountain for Zan yesterday and then Kaoren and I both slept till what would count as about 4 am in our current sleep cycle, when he woke from a minor nightmare about the hairy roamer space. He seemed very glad I was there, and we enjoyed the luxury of not having anything at all scheduled until the afternoon, when Kaoren had arranged to take his sister out into the city after meeting me. I'm not allowed out without a really large es
cort now, and that's not going to change in the near future. I was working on not being grumpy about that.
We ate leftovers and chatted briefly about music (it doesn't surprise me that what music Kaoren does listen to is the Taren version of classical), but again we didn't do much talking. Kaoren is a lot less stingy with words privately than he is when he's on duty, and has so far answered every question I've asked him. But I still haven't recovered from my tendency to kiss him.
Around mid-morning Maze sent us the next episode of The Hidden War to review, which distracted me enough to stop for breakfast.
"Would you watch this if Fourth Squad hadn't been pulled into it?" I asked, as we settled on the couch with mugs of hot soup.
"I have for years, though not so devotedly as Eyse and Ferus. It shapes the way we are viewed too greatly to ignore, as well as being well-written. A distorted mirror." Kaoren tilted his head at whatever expression was on my face, then gave me one of his barely visible smiles. "If my squad would stop taking it as a direct insult, Lastier would be a source of endless amusement. Some of the things he has said were very much what I was thinking."
He keeps surprising me. "I guess I was very dirty."
"No, 'pathetic creature' would be closer there." His smile faded, then he took my mug and put it and his own on the floor then pulled me properly onto his lap and gave me an image out of his personal log – a closed but not opaque pod on the Diodel, with the me from months ago lying inside, freshly scrubbed and deeply unconscious. In the medical tunic they'd given me after I'd been rescued I looked painfully thin and bruised. "I was mildly surprised that you'd managed to survive, composed my report, and didn't think about you until we found you being trained by Namara. Yet I kept that image."
He recovered our mugs (Telekinesis is so useful) and we watched the episode quietly, waiting till the end to talk since there were no ads. It was the first time the show had been primarily from 'my' point of view since I was rescued. I find it odd the things which they show out of order, or which were hugely important to me which are left out altogether. Like my reaction to having my interface expanded, which did after all nearly kill me, and hurt like hell and had me throw the only real tantrum I've managed since I got here. And they'd skipped me going into the spaces with First Squad, which I'm pretty sure was somehow linked to me being able to go home on my birthday (after all, that's hardly the first time I'd been desperately homesick).
The Touchstone Trilogy Page 63
