Inisar’s voice was still really ragged, making it obvious why Korinal had been doing all the talking for the Nuran Setari. But croakiness didn’t undercut the power of his words: "We are at war."
Korinal took over, very briefly pointing out that both the increasing fracturing of the spaces and the machinations of the Cruzatch were active threats which could not be ignored. That whatever decision the people of Nuri made, all the Nuran Setari’s energies must go into fixing the bigger problem. And that while they might settle at a platform town with the protection of the Ddura, Ionoth were far from the only dangers a Nuran settlement would face on Muina. Even the landholder who had initially objected had to concede when the cook added that it was better to try to retain some sense of identity as part of Pandora, to contribute to what kind of people would be known as Muinan, than to be dead.
Once the representatives had made a unanimous decision to stay at Pandora, Tsaile Staben moved on to the question of leadership, and whether the rest of the Nurans would accept further decisions made on their behalf by the representatives in the room, or whether some kind of election needed to be facilitated, or if there was a person or group of people who leadership could be expected to devolve to. This was another twisty question for them to answer. Nuri had a ruling class, but most of them were dead. Of the representatives only the scholar and the priestess were these elite Zarath, and neither of them had been close to actual leadership. A small percentage of the children were Zarath and while there were no members of Nuri’s last ruler’s immediate family, there were a handful who would debatably be next in line for the throne – though they hadn’t had a chance to work out exactly who was among the survivors.
But, even though everyone who had reached Muina had been together in the same shelters, it was clear that now the initial shock was passing there was a lot of anger growing about who on Nuri had been working with the Cruzatch. The representatives very much doubted that a Zarath-dominated leadership would be accepted.
"There is only one who I know all would follow," said the cook, again cutting short the debate. "Because we have followed him already, to keep our lives." She bent her head briefly in Inisar’s direction.
"No."
Inisar’s very good at being absolute. The most they could budge him was that he would advise the council when necessary, and eventually the council decided to temporarily keep the current group as representatives, until some form of election could be held.
That settled, Tsaile Staben moved on to the agenda for the rest of the day: first to gather all the Nurans in Moon Piazza, announce the provisional representatives, and have them explain the decision to stay at Pandora. Once that was done, the Nurans would be grouped into temporary residences, distributing the adults first, so that every apartment had at least one adult. And their ten kids.
Everyone needed to be shuffled for a second time through the platform room to try to ensure the whole group had security passes. There would be information sessions on screens set up at different parts of Moon Piazza to give Korinal-translated statements of what had happened on Nuri and what was going to happen over the next few weeks at Pandora. Supplies had been urgently sent from Kolar and would hopefully reach Pandora in time to be distributed, so that everyone would have a couple of changes of clothing, underwear, and things like hairbrushes. There would be very cursory health checks. Most importantly, names would be collected in the hopes of matching surviving family groups back together.
And that brought us to the big sticking point. When Tarens find strays (which I guess is kind of what the Nurans count as), they immunise them, put them on birth control and, unless they’re Kolaren, inject the interface. Birth control they weren’t going to worry about at the moment, but the immunisation had to be mandatory, which meant explaining what immunisation was. But it was the second needle which was going to divide Pandora in two.
It’s hard to live in a Taren building without the interface. You can use the bathrooms, fortunately, but you can’t even turn the lights on or off. Before the Tarens agreed to give the interface to settlers, the Kolarens had had to use handheld devices to do everything – respond to alerts, locate rooms, get through doors.
Tsaile Staben wanted the Nuran representatives' advice on how to best approach explaining the options – which in itself involved a great deal of explanation and you could see that even with a bunch of people selected for calm leadership qualities, none of them thought "a machine in your head" made any kind of sense.
It would make life infinitely easier for KOTIS to have the Nurans accept the interface, but I don’t think Tsaile Staben thought for a moment she could convince the representatives, let alone the rest of the Nurans. She just wanted to make option two – injecting an identity trace in one hand – seem like a bearable alternative. A barcode below the skin, so KOTIS could track where all the Nurans were.
Isten Notra, sitting next to me, stole Ghost from my lap and quietly played with her while the conversation went back and forth, and eventually said: "Perhaps Caszandra can share her experiences. Although her reaction to the expanded interface was asymptomatic, her introduction to it might give you a better idea of what to expect."
Given that the interface has nearly killed me twice, and I had thrown a temper tantrum over it, I didn’t consider myself at all the right spokesperson. The Nuran representatives looked at me doubtfully, and the cook asked apologetically to be reminded who I was (I was dressed as a Taren Setari, after all).
Inisar spoke up at that, his ragged voice cracking from the effort as he said: "Caszandra Devlin is the touchstone who made it possible for Muina’s children to return to this world, and the one who freed me. She is the reason you are alive, and here."
Even the other Setari looked shocked at that – I guess he hadn’t had a chance to explain how he got free. Tsur Selkie super-briefly explained about Sight Sight leading him to ask me to try to visualise Inisar, and the questioning of the projected version of Inisar (something which made Inisar’s eyes widen rather – he hadn’t known about that), and then me reaching out and breaking the real Inisar’s chains. And then Selkie noted that when I’d been first discovered on Muina no-one had known I was a touchstone and so I’d been processed as an ordinary stray and given the injection we were discussing.
It’s really hard not to hide under the table when people are staring at you like you have two heads.
"My language very different from Muinan," I said cautiously. "So I had not an explanation beforehand. Implanting the interface, they use a rounded metal tube pressed against my temple. It stung, and then was bad headache worse and worse over the next days. It tapered off after third day and then I start seeing things – the basic controls of interface."
I paused, considering how very unattractive that had all sounded, then pushed myself to say clearly: "Have you noticed how people here keep glance at that wall?" I gestured to my right, and saw that the Nuran Setari at least nodded. "That’s because the interface let us see map display there, show all of Muina, and track the ships come here from the rift. Is like an illusion only people using the interface can see. I can use the interface to talk someone on other side of planet, or read any book Tarens have ever written, or look at what goes on outside, or watch everyone fight that scratchy massive, to see if I miss anything. The interface monitors my heartbeat and sends alert if I’m hurt or ill, and I can use it to call for help if someone attacks me. You said before that you were worried that by staying here the Nurans would become underclass. If you stay here, and don’t use the interface, you guarantee that. It would be like – like not learning to speak."