It took me a while to work out what the buildings on the inner rim of the piazza reminded me of – this place in England called Bath. A solid row of buildings stretching along the massive outer curve of the crescent. The Earth version has more vertical and horizontal lines, if I remember properly, while this swirled and flowed with the stylised outlines of trees (even etched onto the glass which had just been installed on the hotel parts). These buildings are going to be museum, hotels, some kind of theatre, galleries, shops and restaurants. It also extends underground, and most of it is empty whitestone shell without windows, except for the hotel, which is getting close to furniture and fittings stage.
Maze sat on one of the benches looking very at peace and using Telekinesis to brush away the snow so I could see more of the piazza’s pattern.
"You really like all this, don’t you?" I said, sitting down with him after I’d peered at everything in range. "Putting up a city."
"There’s a great deal of satisfaction in making things, even if all I’m contributing is the heavy lifting. I’ll miss the sense of accomplishment once this stage is over. Are you ready to go to Mesiath?" He smiled when I nodded. "You’ve overcome your issues with swimming."
"I guess." I’d forgotten I had them. "Everyone’s there, so it doesn’t feel the same at all. Do you really think it’s useful? That there’s something to talent training which has been missing?"
"The training I can’t be sure about. Clearing the mind, getting some physical exercise – both are worthwhile, quite aside from whether we achieve further results." He looked wry. "At least that’s what I told our training coordinators, who consider this whole approach unscientific."
"Did you feel at all connected to anything yesterday?"
"That’s hard to say. I found myself very aware of the larger world, of the forest. Particularly when we all quieted down. Whether having an appreciation of my surroundings can make the slightest difference to my use of talent I don’t know."
We gathered together and headed back to Mesiath – which was having a minor drama because one of the technicians had been bitten by a spider and his hand had swelled up very painfully, but Auron took him off to Pandora and everything soon calmed down. Another nice swimming trip. Kaoren was glad to see me, but most of his attention was caught up by puzzling out possible approaches to being connected, and I told him I was going to paddle about in a particular spot where everyone could see me and left to avoid distracting him. There were these fantastic miniature weasel creatures lurking about the roots of the trees along the bank and I had a great time with Zan just watching them. I think Earth has something like them, but I can’t remember what they’re called.
Tsur Selkie arrived back on Muina while we were doing this, and came and looked at all his highly-trained killers lolling about in the sun. He doesn’t seem to have objected to the experiment, though, and Kaoren is definitely planning to continue. He says that he’s having trouble compartmentalising the challenge though, and is struggling to keep focus outside the swimming trips.
All the captains are at a meeting with Selkie and some other bluesuits at the moment, and I am at least going to make sure that I don’t cause any dramas.
Monday, August 11
Hunter
Ghost is here!
I was snoozing in my room after a morning testing session in the Ena (under the watchful eye of Tsur Selkie), and she woke me up with her purring and walking all over me and seems pretty damn happy to have found me. I could hardly believe it, and was so glad to see her, and petted and played with her while I decided what to do.
Not that I really had any choice. Kaoren would be hurt if I tried to keep her secret from him, and I had a snowflake’s chance in hell of actually doing so. Not to mention that she was sure to materialise abruptly in front of someone. Kaoren is at Mesiath today (I slept through lunch-time swimming), while Maze is playing construction crew, but the new satellites mean I could send a channel request to both of them which said: "What’s the Taren word for déjà vu – the feeling you get when you feel like you’ve done this before?" and streamed visual of Ghost sitting in my lap.
I think I managed to render Maze speechless. Kaoren laughed, and told me a phrase which means the same as déjà vu. After a bit of speculation on how she managed to get here, and double-checking that I was sure that it really is Ghost, they decided there really wasn’t a great deal they could do since I wasn’t willing to hand her over for experimentation (testing). Not that they’re exactly keen, even when I pointed out that she was a great stickie detector.
Second Squad seems to be here, so I think I’ll go down and introduce Ghost to them.
Filling up
After a bit of wide-eyed surprise, Second Squad (and Zee, Sefen and Eeli) proved to be a good start for Ghost. They were careful not to be too loud (even Eeli), and followed my instructions for introducing yourself to cats, and soon she was winding her way between their legs and allowing them to gingerly pet her. It’s very weird for them, though, since she is an Ionoth and even the ones they don’t kill they take good care to avoid. Eeli was in ecstasy, of course, but I noticed that not wanting to scare Ghost meant she was well able to stop herself from being noisy. Ghost, in turn, decided to adore Nils. She purred herself silly and ended up sitting on his shoulder poking her nose in his ear.
Second Squad found this hilarious, and teased him about being irresistible, but he just smiled and set Ghost on his lap and played with her until the other squads started drifting back and she went off and hid in one of the unoccupied bedrooms. Nils is still being unusually serious and subdued, but doesn’t seem unhappy or anything. Totally non-flirty, though, which is probably a good thing given that the two Kalrani assigned to Second, Nala and Joen, are taking turns going bright red or drooling whenever he’s anywhere near them. They seem like okay people despite that – even when Nils is being mild and polite he just oozes smex in a way which is hard to ignore, so I can hardly blame them for being flustered.
I wonder if Nils and Zee have had some kind of huge argument? They weren’t ignoring each other or anything, but just didn’t have much to do with each other. I’m very curious, but don’t dare ask anyone. Zee’s made it clear that I should stay out of her private life.
I did an entire episode of Planet Earth during testing – Tsur Selkie ran me through a simple visualisation and then had me tire myself out making TV – but because I spent so long sleeping and chatting and playing with Ghost I didn’t get any subtitling done. I also did some random requests – dinosaurs (excerpts from Jurassic Park, mainly) and more populous bits of Earth (I did that ad for Qantas where all these kids are singing I Still Call Australia Home in different places, and then just random fragments of bits of movies which show famous buildings).
We sat around in the evening talking about the signing ceremony. Just one week away, with people starting to arrive from two days before. It’s an insane timetable, even with Setari doing the heavy lifting and a thousand or so people (greensuits, pinksuits, greysuits) working on the actual fitting out of the buildings. All the main Telekinetic and Levitation talents are going to be devoted to construction and construction alone from now until then, although they’re still allowed to go swimming at Mesiath or back to their rooms to rest at lunch, since a long day of heavy talent-based lifting is really bad for their health. Their bodies can’t keep up with the energy output. The rest of the Setari will be doing what I was doing – helping out with whatever.