After locating the nearest bathroom first, I found Nils, and Endaran from Eleventh, waiting in a largish conference room along with another greysuit, two greensuits, and the bluesuit in charge off in one corner talking to someone I assumed was local to the island. I gave them all a vague and general smile before helping myself to the little buffet laid out on the table, sitting down next to Endaran. I was seriously starving.
While I ate, Nils tried to tease me about my interview, which had taken about two minutes to reach worldwide transmission. The girl, Palan Leoda, had levitated up the shaft of something like a dumb-waiter to win a bet that she could get in to talk to me. The other children in her class had promptly begun feeding her questions, and now half the planet was dissecting my answers. Everyone seems to have leapt to the conclusion that Nils is the Third Squad captain and that I’m desperately in love with him. He does have a very sexy voice.
I was still pretty tired, and went back to the medical facility to sleep again until Mori woke me when it was time to go. Most everyone was awake by then (another kasse along). All but the injured had been sleeping on the transports. Ironically they’d brought me into the facility so I could be under closer medical observation, but there’s no way Wednesday could have reached me if they’d just left me with everyone else.
A few of the injured would be returning all the way to the main KOTIS facility using transports rather than through the spaces from Gorra. Eighth Squad came out worst from the clean-up of the swoops. Bryze had a broken leg and Hasen was speared by a beak almost through her shoulder.
The trip to Gorra wasn’t very relaxing, since it had stopped raining but was still extremely windy, and occasionally the engines of the transport rose to an audible whine, or we would gain or drop altitude alarmingly. I hate to imagine how bad it must have been to ground us altogether. Everyone was quiet and grim, probably, like me, reviewing the post-storm images of the little island with the massive half falling off what little remained of the buildings underneath. It had been treating the buildings like barnacles, breaking them open and picking out the flesh inside, then chipping down further for more. Add a few explosives on to that and there wasn’t much remaining of the processing facility.
Rather than look at it, I said to Mori: "Realised another reason why Setari hunt Ionoth in spaces instead of in real-space. Much better weather."
"Absolutely," she said. "We would have trouble surviving the battleground, let alone the battle. Does Earth ever face storms this bad?"
I had no idea how to measure them comparatively, and shrugged. "Think it’s more frequency that’s the issue. Earth has destructive storms, but we don’t have them every week all over the planet."
"An extreme rather than the normal state. What about Earth compared to Muina?"
"Hard to say – only ever saw a bit of rain there. No really violent storms. Think it must be a lot more geologically stable, though, since your language doesn’t even have words for things like volcanos or tsunamis."
"Volcanos?" Par repeated curiously.
"When burning liquid rock is pushed up to the surface, out of the planet’s core."
Par gave me a very uncertain look, and Mori frowned. Nils, behind me again, leaned forward to ask: "Are you being serious?"
The short remainder of the flight back to Gorra involved my feeble explanations of tectonic plates, earthquakes, tsunamis, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, pyroclastic clouds, Pompeii, and the prospect of California falling into the ocean. They weren’t quite sure whether to believe me, and now have a distortedly dramatic view of what life on Earth is like. I’ve been describing Earth to people for months, but there’s still so much I’ve never even mentioned, or have given only half-assed explanations for. It’s like the story of the group of blind people trying to get an image of an elephant by touch.
I think I also helped distract them from the recent fight which, though it didn’t involve any Setari deaths, was not by any means easy and had as its prelude the death of nearly two hundred people. It’s the second massive to emerge on Tare in a short few years, and the number of escort Ionoth was by far the most they’ve ever seen. Without me along it would have taken them a lot longer to kill the massive, and with the storm and swoops factored in, any number of little islands might have been crunched before they’d finished it off. For all the killing they’d done, for all they could now go to Muina, they were no further along to finding a solution to the tearing of the spaces. And the problem was getting worse.
We walked rather than ran back from Gorra to the main KOTIS facility on Konna, with the usual brisk care Fourth Squad takes to everything. When we finally arrived, Ruuel gave everyone a nod and said: "Free time until the rotations have been rearranged. Devlin, report to medical."
I expected that, so didn’t pull a face at him, just made sure to detour back to my rooms for a shower and to grab my diary first. The greysuits love to add to their collection of stray’s brain scans. And I have nothing in my calendar any more, and aren’t assigned to anything.
I think I figured out why Ruuel was so annoyed with me, though. I was assigned to Fourth Squad, at least nominally, yet reported Wednesday Addams to Nils instead of my captain-of-the-moment. And Fourth Squad’s had enough grief lately about their fictional treatment of me. Any hint that I preferred not to be working with them was pretty much guaranteed to get me a black mark in Ruuel’s books.
Can’t risk showing any hint of how much I want to be around Ruuel. Can’t let anyone think I don’t want to be around Ruuel. Can’t win.
Friday, May 30
Long Term
I spent a lot of today on the roof. It was windy and overcast, but nothing dramatic. After I escaped from medical yesterday, Ketzaren and Alay took me for a jog around the stairs training course (in other words, we started out jogging, and then there was a lot of walking involved while I caught my breath), and later First Squad had me for dinner again.
We had a pretty frank discussion about the increasing number of Ionoth. Just as Taarel had said, all squads are reporting increased populations in the known spaces, and larger numbers of roamers. More new gates are tearing, too. It’s not like Tare’s going to be overwhelmed next week or anything, but First didn’t hide that the long-term situation wasn’t looking great.
Zee put it most bluntly. "Even if we do succeed in gaining access to Kalasa, there’s no guarantee that there are explanations there. No guarantee that there is any kind of solution. And the timeframe is beginning tighten."
Nor did they pretend that experiments with me trying to get someone into Kalasa weren’t likely to happen sooner rather than later, though they haven’t been scheduled yet. I’m glad I’ve been preparing myself.
Saturday, May 31