I hope I said the right thing to the kids.
Tuesday, September 2
Settling In
One bit of good news Kaoren passed on when I was released from medical yesterday afternoon – they were able to find their way back to Muina because Par had succeeded in focusing his connection to the Ena. He’s only able to do it in short bursts, but he can reliably enhance himself now. I went and found Par and hugged him, and he gave me one of his slow smiles, knowing exactly what I was thanking him for.
Kaoren’s other bit of news was that my projection training in the Ena has been cancelled till further notice, which was no news at all. The possibility of ambushes, and the discovery that the Cruzatch can mess around with the gates, means that even the doubled Setari squads are going to be limited in the kind of missions they undertake.
Eighth and Squad One and one of the Nuran Setari went out to examine the gate which was blocked to try to figure out exactly what happened to it, and brought back a bunch of readings but no clear answer. The Ddura is going to be summoned to Pandora three times daily on a random schedule in an effort to prevent ambushes in the immediate area, and some greensuits will be permanently stationed at the amphitheatre to call it on a moment’s notice. More drones will be set into near-space, to try to track any Cruzatch movement, and they’re looking at some kind of breather which can be used to counter another gas attack (unfortunately our underwater breathers don’t work out of water).
The dealing-with-Devlin meeting had been argumentative, with the senior KOTIS representatives disagreeing about what to do next.
"We have more pieces of this puzzle," Kaoren told me, "but as yet no way to put them together. Without any direction, we are left reacting instead of acting."
It’s rare for Kaoren to let himself sound so frustrated, but a going-nowhere meeting on top of yesterday had really got to him. We are all pretty much running about like headless chickens, not even able to see a way to a solution.
The rest of the day was a complete contrast – determinedly focused on the business of resettling a world, which has been powering on despite the plots of burny floating people. When we took the kids down to the common room for dinner, the chatter was all strictly kept to the expedited intake of some of the approved settlers from Tare and Kolar, including a small group who are basically the newly-created Muina Broadcasting Corporation. They’d arrived that morning and lost no time setting up, and even did an evening broadcast which the Setari all watched and discussed.
To a degree the MBC is going to be a mouthpiece of KOTIS – they have some strict rules they have to follow while the settlement remains under military command – but they’re otherwise independent and took a friendly, chatty sort of approach to their stories, which were mostly about the school structure and housing set up for the Nurans, and the progress of the construction of the industrial complex, the completion of which will truly make Muina independent, because so long as it’s operating, technicians can with time, care and nanotech produce pretty much anything.
The MBC crew had also done a series of interviews with the people who had been selected for early settlement, and it was fun to see the mix of joy, ambition and nervous excitement the new arrivals brought.
I particularly enjoyed an interview with a family of Kolarens who were related to one of the greysuits working at Pandora, and were going to operate a store at the edge of the residential complex, close to Moon Piazza. It will be a mixture of café and trading post and luxury import service. Their hugely excited teenaged children seem to be founding members of the Raiten Shaf Fan Club, one of the girls announcing that he and all the other Setari (but especially Shaf) would always be given a free cup of fahr (a treacly tea) whenever they dropped by.
Of course all the Setari found this very funny, and teased Shaf about needing to take a bodyguard with him to save him from his fans. Kolaren Setari don’t have an image shield, so are much better known on their home world.
After dinner Kaoren and I played an interface game with the kids. Many Taren games, particularly for children, have a big physical component – necessary when so much of their lives can be conducted sitting down. This one was a spelling game which created an overlay of plants and statues in our lounge room, and then hid letters all over the place, which you had to hunt and touch to spell words.
It gave the kids appropriate challenges for their learning level (basic letter recognition and cat and dog equivalents) and Kaoren incredibly complex polysyllabic words which he collected without an error, and me moderately advanced words which I kept almost spelling right but not quite. Even Sen beat me.
Ys and Rye are trying to return to not talking to us, but Rye slipped a few times, caught up with the game. After they were settled in bed, Kaoren and I sat on the grassy slope outside our balcony, listening to the sounds of the early evening out over the lake, and just being glad to be alive and together.
The kids are aware that I’ve been injured (Sen unceremoniously lifted my shirt at breakfast so that she could inspect my bandages), and we’ve been trying to set up systems to cover the times our routine is interrupted by emergencies. Kaoren created calendar icons and stepped the kids through viewing and interpreting our schedules. This was a pretty large conceptual leap for children from a sundial time system. Sen followed in only the most general way, but it was some measure of Ys and Rye’s capacity that they were able to interpret the blocks of colour to discover that I had an appointment this afternoon (more medical), that Kaoren had morning and afternoon sessions (squad training) and that tomorrow both Kaoren and I are booked for almost all day (going to Kalasa). They can’t read the explanations yet, but Kaoren showed them how to run a text-to-sound facility, producing a kind of frozen amazement as he put entries in their own calendars for school, story time, and bedtime and the interface obligingly read them out.
He also showed them how to use the Taren dictionary function – which combines nicely with the text-to-sound facility. Hard to imagine being so tremendously excited about a dictionary, but it briefly broke Ys' controclass="underline" she was obviously delighted at having a book which told her the meaning of all the words.
This afternoon, after my medical session and Kaoren’s training is done, we’re going to go for a walk along the lake (with Lohn and Mara and Nils and Ketzaren, since Kaoren’s not allowed to take me anywhere alone any more). I also want to take a trip up the river to see if I can work out roughly where I arrived from Earth, and Kaoren is going to try and arrange that, but says there might be resistance.
Wednesday, September 3
Cattiness
Really enjoyed the walk yesterday afternoon, although Lohn and Nils started asking me questions about my arrival here (ten months ago!), and then took great delight entertaining the kids with a highly coloured history of Cassandra Devlin. Ys produced some marvellously incredulous looks.
Mara hates being injured. Even Taren science won’t let her shrug off massive blood loss, bite wounds on arm and side, and crushing fractures. During our mild walk I could see her tiring, and getting frustrated with herself, and Lohn watched her like a hawk, all the while pretending not to, so I guess he’s under orders not to fuss. Sen provided a useful excuse to fly back – which is a pretty spectacular thing to do at sunset beside a lake. We endlessly confused a flock of ducks, and since Rye seems to be fascinated by animals, Nils kidnapped the kids to follow after them for a while, and brought three very pink-cheeked children back for a goodbye dinner for Second, who returned to Tare today. Nils took Ghost with him, and I’ll miss them both rather a lot.