Pleased to no longer be the only way into Kalasa, I was a cheerful taxi back to Pandora for the night, and fell asleep in the middle of a big group dinner in the main building. I woke up back in my little building, with Lohn and Mara playing babysitter in the next room.
I didn’t know I’d lost my beanie till Ruuel gave it back to me, just after I’d transported Fourth Squad. He told me there’d be training tomorrow, if the medics cleared me, and then walked off with Taarel, but I was in too good a mood to be conflicted and sad, and was distracted trying to remember enough of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves to tell it properly to Isten Notra.
Sunday, June 15
Hot/Cold
After playing taxi this morning for a good half hour, with Glade carrying me, I spent some time in the main building having a very in-depth medicking session. My legs look amazingly horrible. The greysuits seem fairly confident that they’ll be able to get me fixed up without significant scarring (after all, they can regrow skin, muscle, bone – probably everything except a missing head) but I’m not to try walking even short distances for a few more days. Part of the problem is I basically did everything to my legs all at once – burns, deep tissue bruising, hairline fractures and massive gouges. All from the knee down, which makes managing it a little easier – though Ruuel did give me a few bruises stopping me from kidnapping myself.
The medics neutralised my pain meds completely during the first bit, which nicely demonstrated to me that my legs hurt an awful lot. It was Mori and Glade’s turn to baby-sit me, and Mori did a lot of hand-squeezing and tried to distract me and I tried to pretend my eyes weren’t full of tears. My new security arrangements seem to mean I have two Setari with me at all times, even when I’m just sleeping. Not suffocatingly so – they stay mostly in the next room while I sleep and will let me alone to read and things – but they don’t allow anyone, even the greysuits, to be alone with me. Even Shon, who came to chat when I woke up for lunch. Fourth Squad is covering my days, and First and Third are rotating through covering the sleep shift. Eeli was part of my babysitting team during the dawn shift last night, and is a quite overwhelming person to have breakfast with.
It’s hard to tell what Fourth Squad thinks about being taken off Kalasa-exploration to baby-sit me. Not visibly annoyed, at least, but I wouldn’t expect that of them. Nor particularly wary of me, even though I’m probably as dangerous to them as I am to myself at the moment. Mori and Glade patently had no idea that they were guarding me from Kolarens.
After lunch, it was Ruuel and Sonn’s turn, and time for some training. Ruuel was at his crispest and most efficient, levitating me into the second room and onto the scan chair after the scarcest of warnings. "Until you’ve recovered strength, these sessions will be confined to objects in the immediate area," he said. "And concentrate on the manifestations in this world. Keep your eyes open."
He had me try and make a copy of a mug which was sitting right in front of me. Keeping my eyes open was harder than it sounds, almost as bad as keeping your eyes open when sneezing. Every time I started to shut them, Ruuel would say "Eyes." He never sounded impatient, but I came dangerously close to trying to manifest a mug, preferably full of something hot, falling from the ceiling onto his head. Though he probably would have dodged.
But I did do it, eventually. The cup looked exactly the same, and not blurry either, so it probably wasn’t floating around out in the Ena at the same time. I felt like I’d been trying to tie knots in cherry stalks with my tongue, but it was there.
And something else was too. I didn’t notice it until Ista Temen took a deep breath. Sonn picked up the mug gingerly, and I could see the steam rising off it before I recognised the smell. Unfortunately, that surprised me enough that the mug vanished.
"What was it?" Ista Temen asked as I sat back in disappointment. "It smelled delicious."
"Hot chocolate," I said. "Earth drink. All these planets, and none of them have chocolate. Severe oversight in world creation."
"Was its inclusion deliberate?" Ruuel asked.
"No. Well, I was thinking about hot drinks." I gave him a bland look, but he was being all business as usual and didn’t show any sign of knowing my thoughts.
"Repeat the exercise without letting your attention wander," he said, and kept me at it until I could produce the mug without taking ten minutes to manage it, and had the inevitable headache. But they’re decreasing in severity.
"Is it warm again today?" I asked Ista Temen while she was giving me another dose of drugs. "Can I go outside?"
It was, fortunately – much warmer than when the morning shift went to Kalasa. Ruuel called the rest of his squad down and had them try and hit each other while he watched, offering the occasional critical comment. No approving nods this time, and I decided it was stupid to feel let down just because he hadn’t given me any either. He’s very strict with his squad.
I watched for a while, then searched for birds out on the lake, but I think they must have all migrated somewhere warmer. I was wondering how much trouble I’d get in if I tried to make a mug of hot chocolate without permission – and whether it would be possible to drink it – when Ruuel (standing just behind me and not at all where I’d thought he was) asked: "And would you have survived a Winter here alone?"
Barely managing not to jump out of my skin, I tilted my head back to look up at him, surprised he’d asked me a question not related to any assignment. That Isten Notra had obviously shown him the log of my conversation with the Kolarens wasn’t unexpected, but I wanted to see if there was any hint of anger in his face. He was looking out, though, not down at me.
"Barring accidents, probably," I said. "The Ddura was keeping the Ionoth away, and the local predators had plenty of more familiar things to hunt. I would have had to stop being so squeamish and try to kill some of the sheep, though. Living on fruit and nuts wasn’t doing me a great deal of good, and along with the meat the skins would have given me clothes, blankets and hides to block the windows with. Only had the vaguest idea how to cure hides, though, so probably would have been very smelly." I grinned, remembering the filthy creature comment from The Hidden War, then sighed. "But the blood would have attracted predators, and the rams might have attacked me to protect their ewes. I don’t think I’d have been able to manage a broken bone, though I suppose it’s just barely possible the aether would have helped that heal. Probably wouldn’t have survived that chest infection if moonfall had been a day or two later. Very handy."
I paused and looked speculatively toward the old town, but Ruuel said: "You can no longer risk exposure."
Because, like the Setari, I was now too dangerous to get drunk. It’s lucky I’d more or less given up drinking already, or I might have had to be annoyed about that. It’s moonfall tonight, too. I’m not even allowed to go outside and watch it because it gets very cold once the sun drops.
"I doubt I would have enjoyed surviving Winter very much, though," I said, looking back out at the lake, beautiful and indifferent. "And eventually I’d have gotten sick or hurt myself, and died."
He didn’t say anything to that, but he stayed standing behind me for a while, maybe like me thinking about all the things which would have been different. Then he dismissed his squad, and took me to the amphitheatre for the afternoon’s taxi service.