The fact that they’re intending to go ahead with the settlement without answering the question about the Ddura scares the hell out of me.
Wednesday, July 30
Back on Track
Kaoren’s very pleased. First and Fourth took me on the Ena mission he wanted (having stolen Fourteenth’s strongest path finder, Sanya, as well) and they all enhanced and immediately detected a Pillar.
Since they were under strict orders not to take me into combat, but also had the advantage of the immediate near-space and connecting spaces being wiped clear by the Ddura, they could take me along partway, tracking through two gates before they encountered a space which was populated. They then sent me back to wait by the gate with Zee, Halla and Mori as escort, and I got to do tests while the squads pushed on.
A very simple test today – Zee told me to project remembered music or television until I could project no more, and they would measure how much that cost me. I recorded another piece of classical music for Zan (this rather pretty thing done with recorders, slow and spiralling, no idea who it’s by), and then a song for me, and then I did an episode and a half of Planet Earth which I now get to subtitle. I couldn’t do all that in one go – I have to rest every few minutes – but it’s nothing like so difficult a task as doing it in real-space. I stopped when I was totally wiped, and spent much of the afternoon asleep, carefully doing a visualisation exercise before going to bed. Zee stayed in the living room of my apartment, but I managed to not have a nightmare.
When I woke up it was late afternoon, and Kaoren still wasn’t back, but I was determined to stay drama-free and asked Zan and Dess if we could go for a walk along the lake. That wasn’t bad: we chatted about parts of Muina we’ve visited, and then built snow sculptures on the very top of the Setari building/hill until, finally, First and Fourth came back, exhausted but whole.
They’d had to travel ten spaces to get to the Pillar, and had run up against a few tough battles which made them glad they were dual-squadding, especially since the Ena manipulation talents had had to stabilise an awful lot of gates. Par was levitating Sonn, who’d passed out. They sent Squad Three and Fourteenth out to place a couple of drones, and put some extra stabilisation on the gates, and they made it there and back in about an hour and a half. Kaoren and Maze both waited until the other squads were safely back before getting some rest themselves – working their way through dinner and getting a start on their reports. Kaoren pretty much fell into bed once we got back to our room.
I like these bed nooks. The beds themselves are ever so slightly cup-shaped and the nanomaterial mattress makes sleeping on rock a lot more comfortable than you’d expect. Need more pillows, but the walls are great for propping yourself against.
Kaoren gets restless if I’m not in contact with him. I probably shouldn’t be pleased about that. I probably shouldn’t keep experimenting to see how he reacts when I move my leg away.
We’ve only been together two and a bit weeks. It was a shock to flip back through my diary and realise that. I’ve stopped being so wary of doing or saying the wrong thing.
Thursday, July 31
At the movies
All of the Muina-stationed Setari, except for Kiste and Halla who are babysitting me, are back in the Ena today trying to do the tests which had been planned for the last Pillar. The mood was mixed when everyone left: they’ve been wanting to properly study a Pillar for so long, but given what happened last time, no-one was exactly cheerful. And, even though the aether isn’t fatal to them any more, it does make them drunk, which is not a good state to be in any part of the Ena, let alone areas frequented by far too many deep-space roamers. So today’s a serious day.
It’s the Cruzatch which are the biggest concern. It’s all too possible they might try to sabotage the mission again, so the squads plan to use a drone to lock the outlet levers before they venture close to the Pillar themselves.
At least Kiste and Halla are in the exact same boat as me, worrying about their squads. Though interestingly calling each other Tahl and Charan when they think I’m not listening. Kiste’s elbow is almost fully healed now, but he says he’s facing a lot of training to get it back to former strength.
It was a nice day outside, so I decided to see how tolerant they’d be of me wandering about. There’d been a big dump of snow the previous night, but the skies had cleared, and there was no wind. Snow drifts did make it a little hard-going in spots, but I figured this could count as me getting some exercise, and tramped my way all the way in to the old town, up to my old tower, only to find I couldn’t get in. They really have preserved it as a historical site, fitting shields over the windows and doorways.
Annoyed by this, I headed back to Setari quarters and told Kiste and Halla that I was going to spend the rest of the day working on subtitling. So I’m in my bedroom being sore from forging through snowdrifts, and taking a break from translating David Attenborough.
Hm, the Litara just arrived with another massive supplies delivery, and also Third, Eleventh and Thirteenth. More squads here than on Tare at the moment. I guess this is because of the Pillar.
subtitle:[* * *]
Yep, they’re going to have all these squads here for a few days. They don’t quite all fit in the Setari quarters, but along with the supplies were a bunch more mattresses and couches, so people are sharing apartments. The Pillar experiments are going to be performed in shifts because there’s one gate which they aren’t going to be able to hold for more than five days, and they can’t tell when, if ever, it will come back. KOTIS wants to get as much information as possible before they lose the path.
Why the Lantarens couldn’t have stuck these things somewhere easier to get to I don’t know.
The Pillars team returned not long after the Litara showed up, having had to kill a fair number of roamer Ionoth, but not otherwise troubled. No Cruzatch. They’d successfully sent a drone into the Pillar and obtained bunches of useful scans, and positioned it to block the levers from moving. I don’t know if the scans will really tell them anything – ancient Lantaren devices seem to me more on the level of magic than science. They certainly haven’t figured out how the teleporting platforms work.
Still, everyone’s very pleased that there’s been no disasters so far, and the afternoon involved more helpful unpacking and lots of chatting and, since Third is here, great bursts of Eeli excitement. Eeli is totally overjoyed by the new Setari building. A big central socialising area is her idea of heaven, and the sunset over the partially iced lake was glorious enough to brighten the eyes of even the most serious of the Setari.
We had a big group meal, bringing down the new couches out of the apartments to fit the extra people. It was a full-on banquet – the pinksuits are having a great time experimenting with making meals out of some of the plants they’ve been cultivating. And there were a few different meat dishes courtesy of one of the hairy sheep. Slow-cooked mutton. Kolarens are used to meat, but the Tarens had to be careful. Their regular diet includes some seafood, but red meat is an exceptional luxury for them, like a $1000 bottle of champagne. Eeli was horrified when I told her that people from Earth usually eat the baby sheep.
Then Zee insisted I do a screening of Planet Earth with the subtitles so that she could make sense of what she’d seen during the testing session. And the channel she created to watch it kind of snowballed to all the Setari, and then our resident support greysuits and pinksuits, who told their section heads about it, which meant Zee was asked if other people could watch, and then practically everyone in Pandora was. It’s pretty disconcerting to suddenly be throwing a video party for three thousand people.