The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  And then all the settlement stories are completely derailed by Nuri. I'd had no idea that the fact that Nuri had exploded had leaked before KOTIS had any real idea what was going on, leading to a near-riot in one section of Unara.

  Things calmed down a little after Maze had forwarded a preliminary summation of Korinal's story, emphasising that it wasn't an attack which could be turned on us. Not that this really stopped anyone from being frightened, but the lack of shielded underground bunkers made the threat seem less immediate.

  Reaction to the Nurans seems mostly sympathetic. KOTIS released some images of the refugees being threatened by the massive, and I read a nice story about how the little care packages were assembled – incredibly quickly – and though there's been occasional suggestions that Nuri contributed to its own destruction, none of the stories I've read lose focus on the terrible betrayal and loss.

  I feel bad for laughing at a story that said Muinan settlement "comes with free orphan!", but it's true enough. Anyone wanting to settle here is going to have to be vetted on their potential as foster parents or willingness to adopt. Though, given how many hoops you have to jump through to get permission to have more than one child on Tare, I don't think that's going to be a big drawback with Taren settlers.

  Once the medics had cleared me, I found my own orphans on the edge of the common room patio watching Nils – who had offered to look after them for the day – trying to write the Taren alphabet in the mud with a stick. He wasn't doing too badly, and said he was using a tracing program in the interface to show him the best method of forming each letter.

  After thanking Nils I took them upstairs for dinner, asking – in approved Mum fashion – how their day had been. Ys tightened her lips stubbornly. Rye blushed. And Sen told me, in glorious and partly comprehendible detail, all about watching the new school building goopily growing, and their walk to the lake's edge, and the bee in the flower, and the little speckled fish in the water, and the duck, and the stick vegetables for lunch, and Nils flying them to the top of the Setari building, and the 'fake lady' called Tsana Dura who wanted to play games in her head.

  Tsana Dura still wants to play games in my head, too, though she's morphed into a slightly different fake lady – sterner and less fluffy – as I've progressed through the school years. She shares her lessons with a fake man named Tsana Ridel, and Dura and Ridel are these incredible institutions to Tarens – the entire planet shares the same two automated teachers for basic lessons from kindergarten to the end of high school. They were apparently created by averaging the voices and appearances of a few million Tarens.

  There's tons of Dura-Ridel smutfic. Rule 34 never fails.

  Monday, August 25

  Denied

  The Nurans held a memorial service today. Not just for their dead, but for their world, and all that they had built and created for a thousand years. All of Nuri's plants and animals, all their books and art and instruments. I didn't understand the speeches very well, but I felt the raw loss in the voices of those who spoke.

  Ys, Rye and Sen, who I've come to realise haven't been as upset as most of the Nurans because all their care is tied up with each other, were still very grave and quiet, and sat with me and Kaoren at the edge of the crowd. Even though I'm furious about Ys and Rye's injuries, I don't want to keep them away from Nurans generally – or let them isolate themselves, as I'm fairly sure they'd prefer to do. I'm not sure if the talent school is the best way to go about it, though.

  For the moment my parenting efforts have mainly involved keeping Sen occupied so Ys and Rye can learn to their heart's content. They've been attacking learning to read with such grim determination that I'd been starting to worry I'd have to put some limits on their lessons, but they stayed off the interface for the service, and took a break afterwards, distracted by the paper planes I was making for Sen.

  I've still yet to see either of them smile or laugh, but it was the most relaxed they've been with me, totally absorbed by the mechanics of paper airplanes, and reproducing the other origami shapes I created for them. They're tremendously interested in everything, but seem to consider it vital not to show it. Kaoren says they're approaching learning like a starving man gorging himself on food: racing to swallow everything before it's taken away.

  Late this afternoon I took the flower Sen had given me, all limp and flopping, and gave it to Islen Dola over at Botany. He was very pleased, and said that even though the seeds weren't fully matured, there was more than enough genetic material to reproduce it. So one more tiny bit of Nuri will survive.

  We ate dinner down in the common room this evening, with Sen wandering about charming everyone within reach, and Ys and Rye sitting together enduring being looked at by Setari from three worlds. Since Setari do training with Kalrani, it's not as if they're not all used to dealing with children, but playing foster parent is an entirely different matter, and of course Fourth Squad don't know what to make of the whole thing.

  Even with so many orphans needing care, I doubt the kids would be allowed here if it wasn't for the combination of the rarity of Sen's Sight, which Kaoren is one of the few people ideal to nurture, and my involvement. I sometimes imagine the conversations KOTIS Command has about me. I'm mostly shielded from my own uniqueness by the Setari, who treat me with more pragmatism than deference, but I'm well aware that I could trade on my own importance to get an awful lot of things. And that as often as not it doesn't even have to occur to me to try, because KOTIS now watches me very closely and tries to make sure I don't even have a chance to get unhappy.

  Today I'm glad of that, and I mean to take advantage of it.

  Friday, August 29

  Over There

  Having to do a bit of catch-up.

  Tsur Selkie's been conducting my visualisation sessions, usually with Zee along, and a couple of other people for guarding purposes. Kaoren usually isn't involved, but came for my attempt to visualise Earth, mainly because he correctly expected me to be upset. Lohn and Maze were along as guards, and two Nuran observers as well, Korinal and Inisar. Inisar's recovering steadily – although his burns were painful, his main health issues were due to being chained to a wall and not fed much. He's still not close to fighting fit – or even 'good brisk walk' fit – but he was able to come and watch me having family moments.

  And he was wearing a Taren Setari nanoliquid uniform, which was highly disconcerting, but the best thing to ensure he stays warm in the Ena. All of the Nuran Setari are going to have the interface installed, even though they all seem to share Inisar's opinion that it's a "distortion". I find that fascinating – they think it will make them less human, but they're going to have it installed anyway because they know it will make them more effective in combating the Cruzatch. Like someone drinking demon blood so they can fight monsters.

  They're taking turns to have it installed so they won't all be out of commission at the same time.

  The Nurans were there because they want to observe me being a touchstone, but it was an awkward audience for me while all keyed up and emotional about the possibility of seeing my family. I'd had a lot of trouble sleeping, too, and been fretting all morning while Kaoren was off on another Cruzatch-hunt with Fourth and combined First-Second. I'd nominated a particular time for the session, to coincide with 7.00 pm Sydney time (hoping I was right about it not currently being daylight savings time) because at 7.00 Mum usually kicks Jules off the X-Box and watches the news.

  Even though Earth is the furthest I've attempted to look, it was one of the easiest visualisations I've ever done. What could be easier than my own living room? Mum's not exactly into redecorating, either, so the most it changes is more books, different games, and whether she has the ironing board out. She was exactly where I was expecting her, barefoot and dressed in her usual semi-casual work clothes. Jules was a bit of a shock – he's jumped at least three inches in height and gone all gangly. Thirteen's obviously his year for Dad's stork genes to activate.

  It took a moment
after me opening my eyes for them to react, to notice that more than half a dozen people had appeared in the living room (or, in a couple of cases, in the kitchen – where most of the 'audience' partially retreated). Mum seemed to see only me at first, and then was off the couch and squeezing me to death. I started crying, of course, even though I knew it wasn't really Mum, but a projection of Mum, and when she said: "You're home, you're home" over and over I had to try and explain what was really going on. It's pretty hard to tell something that looks just like your Mum that she's really just a psychic version of a holodeck projection of your Mum.

  Fake-Mum, after a moment's shock, thought that was really interesting – which kind of says everything about my family – and then asked me why one of my eyes was a different colour. Jules was busy ogling Kaoren and telling him to make the cool sword come out of his arm again, a demand which Kaoren's Symbol Sight didn't seem equal to translating, so I told Jules I could do that too and made a spike for him, but then introduced Kaoren to fake-Mum and explained that we were engaged and getting married in about a year and a half and that I would try to visit properly but didn't know if it would be possible.

  Mum's reaction made me laugh, and I told Kaoren: "Mum says that if she was real she would congratulate us and welcome you to the family, but thinks that should be saved for when she really gets to see me again and instead will give you several pointed hints about find a way for me to visit Earth." Kaoren said he'd try, and then gave me a warning about my energy use, but I gave myself a free extension by expanding my senses – finding it marvellously easy. It made me feel a lot less like passing out, but also infinitely less focused.

  I told fake-Mum I didn't have a lot of time, but had a bunch of questions. First, how did I go with my exams? [So irrelevant to me now, but I'd studied for them!] She didn't know – she hadn't opened the letter, but sent Jules to get it for me. Second, what did 'aether' and 'touchstone' mean on Earth? Fake-Mum more or less knew the answers, but since she had her laptop, she googled the words for me. It's so weird that she was able to do it, and it really hit me in terms of energy cost, but now I know that a touchstone was a piece of rock used to test the quality of metal, which doesn't match me at all, and that aether meant pretty much what I thought it meant. Next thing I wanted to know was how everyone in the family was. Mum said that Nick had gotten into the uni he wanted, and that I'd missed the Olympics. I was just going to ask what had been happening in my favourite shows and webcomics when a weirdness in my peripheral vision distracted me – and when I turned my head to focus on it properly it distracted me so completely that I dropped the visualisation altogether, fake-Mum and fake-Jules and fake-home fading away in a few seconds.

  Kaoren moved forward, concerned, as I turned my head again to see whether my distraction would keep happening, and then I said "Streaming visual," and tried to show them what I was seeing.

  There was this whole other world lurking out of the corner of my eye. If I kept up my expanded senses, and moved my head sharply, for a moment I could see it overlaid over Muina's near-space. And yet, it was Muina, just a different version of it. The old town was still there, sprawled along the lake bank to the north, except much larger and grander and not ruined at all, and with this huge beam of light shooting up into the sky from where the amphitheatre is. And big statues of people, including one out in the lake with some kind of temple built around it, and these incredible crystal structures which were glowing with the last vestiges of sunset. No hint at all of Pandora, whose buildings are already well-formed in the area's near-space. It was coming up to night-time in the other world, and lots of the windows were lit, and it looked very sumptuous and busy. We seemed to be sitting just outside one of the buildings, and I had a vague glimpse of a person just to my right walking into the building. Just an ordinary-looking person, dressed a bit like the Nurans.

  I'm seriously glad that the interface was able to transmit what I was seeing, because I must have looked particularly weird getting all fascinated with my peripheral vision. The Nurans had to wait until we were back in real-space to be shown what I was seeing.

  It was really really tiring trying to look at it, though, especially coming on top of my Earth visualisation, and I could only manage a half-dozen side-swiped glimpses before I started feeling grey and ill and Tsur Selkie ordered me to stop. And of course going back into real-space made my vision go totally nuts from blurriness. I've learned from past mistakes, though and kept my eyes shut, risking only the briefest squint. The headache from that was enough to send me to the infirmary for the rest of the day. I gather that they were worried that my interface was going to start growing again, because it was giving the equivalent of 'feedback'.

  It's taken two days for my eyesight to stop being blurry, which has meant two days of being blindfolded. That's not as impossibly inconvenient as it sounds, since they gave me a little portable scanner which I could wear like sunglasses to use to see instead. Totally weird seeing the world that way, because all the colours and my depth perception were ever so slightly different. It exacerbated my ever-present blurriness headache to use it for more than a couple of minutes, but at least it meant I could get to the bathroom.

  Sen had a wonderful time playing ministering angel while I lay about feeling rotten and reading. It's a little harder to tell what Ys and Rye made of it all, but they seemed to be in the background a lot making sure that Sen's attempts to nurse me didn't end up with me having mugs of juice tipped on my head.

  I'm feeling a lot better today. The headache only properly went away when the blurriness did. They haven't even begun to decide what, if anything, my peripheral world means and what they might want to do about it.

  Aspiration

  Kaoren seems to have cast a spell on the kids while I wasn't paying attention. We went down to have lunch on the common room patio to celebrate me being able to see normally again, and while Ys and Rye are still all quiet and wary, they constantly look at Kaoren to check his reaction to everything. The rest of Fourth, who were the only ones about for lunch, watched with intense amusement and Mori told me later that it was only to be expected.

  Mori and the rest of Fourth Squad are only just beginning to relax with me again. They never reacted really negatively, but for a long while stopped gossiping and sending me comments over the interface. There'll always be a level of constraint, though, I think, but as much because of my increasingly weird position of touchstone as because of the idea of "Tsee Ruuel + snuggles".

  Of course, Mori has an added level of complexity since she's sleeping with the captain of Eighth Squad, who seems to be Kaoren's closest friend. Mori was more than cheerful when Eighth (and Seventh and Squad Two from Kolar) arrived today, but from my point of view it wasn't good timing. Exhaustion, headaches and children have meant a relatively chaste engagement, and I'm not in the mood to watch Forel purring over Kaoren. Even though I know he doesn't want her to, I still can't stand it when she puts her hands on him – while congratulating him on our engagement, no less.

  I'm so going to ravish Kaoren when he gets back from his training run.

  Kaoren's given Ys and Rye a schedule of things they have to do other than lessons, and also set achievement expectations for their spelling tests. I think that might be what won them over. Not only allowing them to learn to read, and taking an interest, but requiring they do it well.

  Going to ravish him a lot.

  Stories

  Kaoren ended up having to go off to a Captain's meeting, and came back really tired and not a candidate for ravishment. I'd spotted the meeting being added (I've learned to keep an eye on his calendar), and so I managed to shrug off being disappointed about it. I don't want our relationship to always be him supporting me and never the other way around, so I just gave him a foot rub and wasn't surprised when he fell asleep almost immediately. He spent a lot of time with me when I was all headachy and trying to sleep, and so got to be headachy and unable to sleep as well. Except he didn't get to spend all day in bed to m
ake up for it. I'm going to have to revive the sleeping on the couch discussion.

  I distracted myself waiting for him to come back by asking Mara for some recommendations for children's books, and browsing through them to pick one to read. Kaoren had also set bedtimes for the kids, and to reinforce that with Sen (who is very difficult to keep in bed) I decided story time would be a good addition to the routine. I think that worked well, particularly since Ys and Rye could treat it as a continuation of their lessons. Not a bad story, either – it's called Caves of Nonora, and is set back in the underground era on Tare, where a bunch of kids finds a huge hidden kingdom of blue people beneath their island. A chapter conveniently seems to be Sen's staying-awake limit, putting her to sleep nicely, while Ys and Rye were totally fixated.

  I've spent my whole life reading books. I vaguely remember Mum reading to me in our own bedtime sessions, and our house is practically a library. The way I think, the way I act, most of that's because of the books I've read. Caves of Nonora is Ys, Rye and Sen's first book and my voice was a little shaky reading it because I kept thinking about that, and about all the books which were important to me that I don't have to read to them.

  The talent school building is at habitable stage, and they're going to move in children they've identified tomorrow morning, then hold an orientation session in the afternoon. It's not going to be anything like so controlled an environment as the Setari school – the idea is not to turn them into Setari, it's to make sure they have enough control of their talents to not accidentally set buildings alight – and if they have family their family will be living with them. The school will be connected to the Setari building through the medical section and kitchens, and is set further back from the lake, with its balconies looking mostly toward Pandora.