Lots of big announcements along with the signing. KOTIS is going to continue to be in ultimate control for twenty Taren years – military rule – while Muina’s initial stage of settlement is underway. After a Taren year after the signing, all the residents and citizens of Muina will be asked to nominate a provisional ruling council to begin ratifying Muina’s system of laws and government, which are likely to end up being a compromise between Tare’s and Kolar’s. The biggest announcement was the opening of the application process to be a Muinan colonist. There would be certain requirements (psychological testing for being able to stand being outside for Tarens) and lack of criminal convictions and desired skill areas, and obviously being young and healthy and talented with dozens of degrees and an artistic bent helps, but it sounded like it would be possible to just get lucky for some applicants, which is nice. It’s going to be really weird when people start calling Pandora home. Isten Notra and Shon are both going to become permanent Muinans, and at least half of the staff already on-site at Pandora are predicted to apply to bring their families here. The Setari aren’t allowed to apply, as yet.
I’m having a very quiet day – almost everyone has a leave day now that they’re done playing escort to VIPs – and Kaoren and I stayed in our room all morning, except for a dawn trip downstairs to grab breakfast and also some stuff to take away for a picnic lunch. The only other person I’ve spoken to is Nils, who came in with Ghost riding on his shoulder – he said he likes watching the mist which has started rising on the lake recently. We talked about Ghost while Kaoren was looking for something to put the food in – I double-checked whether Nils really was okay with taking Ghost with him, but he absolutely is enjoying having a pet. I was glad, and said he’d seemed kind of down lately, and he gave me an amused look and said Ruuel made me far too scary a proposition to flirt with. But then was more serious and told me his father had died recently, so he’d been a little preoccupied, but there was no need to worry on his account. And then teased me about being in danger of being overly sweet.
I’m glad Ghost decided to adopt Nils as her human.
Since the Ddura was still in the area, we took Ghost with us on our picnic, flying down to the otter stream a bit before lunchtime. They’re still there – I’m so glad about that. And glad that I can tell where living things are, since they were hidden away in some kind of burrow and didn’t show themselves for an age. We ate lunch and enjoyed the peace and quiet and the views, and now Kaoren is practicing sensing his connection with the Ena and trying to focus it without me touching him – something which he’s found impossible to attempt the past few days. Everyone’s still diligently working on this when they get the chance, but hectic mandatory socialising doesn’t exactly make for the best atmosphere. I’m writing this up while watching Ghost explore, and Kaoren says we have to jog back to Pandora later (and has been talking to Zee about amping up my training, bleh).
Double bleh – a bunch of people just flew overhead gawking at us. It’ll be a couple of days before all of the tourists and news reporters have been shuffled back to Tare and Kolar, though most of the really important VIPs are already gone. But soon there’ll be people actually living here – non-KOTIS people, I mean.
Wednesday, August 20
The best laid plans…
Overwhelming day. The only good thing I can say about it is that I’ve continued my run of not being seriously injured.
It started when Tsur Selkie woke me and Kaoren up hours before dawn and asked us to come down to the common room where he was waiting. He’d been reviewing the logs from the last time the Tarens had sent a ship to Nuri and been turned back, and wanted to enhance and also for Kaoren to enhance and review them as well. I’m not sure if he was actually reviewing all this stuff at 3 am, or had maybe been having the kind of insightful nightmares that Sight Sight talents suffer from.
I looked at the logs as well, but all I saw was some fields and trees and a guy dressed like Inisar floating in the air in front of what I guess must have been a hovering spaceship. He didn’t project telepathically, just kept repeating in a stern voice that they had to leave or be destroyed, which the ship fortunately had the external sensors to pick up. Kaoren and Selkie watched it three times, then Selkie said: "Your evaluation?"
"There is an overlay of…constraint." Kaoren was frowning, looking very puzzled, and shook his head. "A reading from scans rarely works for me with Sight. Symbol shows a guard turning away an intruder, implacable rejection. But still, there is a hint of something more. And – I have a sense of urgency."
Selkie nodded, all curt and intense. "This is similar, a stronger impression, to what I saw with the one named Inisar. There I interpreted the sense as disobedience, twisting orders to suit his own purposes when he provided that book. Yet here I have the same sense, on a far stronger level. It is almost as if this Nuran is acting against his own will."
"Mind control?" Kaoren said, doubtfully, while I said, "Geas?"
They both gave me that wide-eyed and still reaction which means one of their Sights has triggered, then Selkie made me explain what the word meant. "Just myth and fiction," I said. "A kind of spell put on people to make them perform a particular task. But – Inisar was obeying strictly to the letter of his orders, yet able to work around it, and that’s how geases are said to work."
"Have you been able to visualise using an individual as point of focus, rather than a place?" Selkie asked.
"Have had real dreams of Kaoren a few times," I admitted, going all hot and embarrassed. "Haven’t tried to do that when I’m awake, though."
"Ever while on different planets?" Selkie asked
I shook my head. Kaoren caught and kept hold of my hand while he watched the logs again.
"Constraint," he repeated. "And urgency."
"Very well," Selkie said, and brought us into a channel, then sent override requests to the captains of all of the other squads on-site – First, Second, Third, Fifth, Twelfth, Squad Three and Squad One (who had been sent to attend the ceremonies) – and also Zee, who I’ve started to realise does a lot of captain-duties in a kind of senior female capacity.
Selkie’s override message said: "Prepare for Ena mission, channel members only, secure event." Which means they couldn’t tell the rest of their squads. Kaoren grabbed a bunch of energy drinks from the kitchen, and I hit the ground floor bathroom.
As soon as everyone was awake (and presumably able to process what he was saying), Selkie went on to describe Inisar’s second visit (something which I’m pretty sure only Maze and Kaoren knew among the Setari), then went on to say: "Sights indicate that there are critical developments on Nuri. We are going to attempt to use Devlin to visualise the situation there."
I’d hate to be a Setari captain, woken up in the middle of the night just to watch me. It was finding out that there’d been events they hadn’t been told about which would be the bigger issue, though. But they didn’t comment, or show more than a crisp readiness to get on with the job – even Kajal was totally proper.