Because of the differences between the fictional story and the real story, I’m not sure it’s really a good thing to feed them information. There’s no way for them to properly portray my relationship with Kaoren, not with how different Lastier is from him, and so to a degree it seems pointless to me to try and help make it slightly less inaccurate. KOTIS plainly wants me to do it, but I’ve been hanging back on agreeing.
And then there was the extra request. Instead of filming my Kalasa ordeal, The Hidden War’s producers want to buy the mission tape from KOTIS. To take my log and simply broadcast it, right up until my rescue (or, well, until I passed out before I was rescued).
"Why would I want that?" I asked, shrugging off the prospect of even more money. "Why would KOTIS want that?"
"For KOTIS it’s simple – the log doesn’t tell anything more than what everyone knows, but releasing it undercuts the belief that we’re not being completely open and honest about events. Not that anything other than the more worrying theories are currently being held back, but since the destruction of Nuri suspicion has reached sky-breaking level. There isn’t a great deal of motivation for you, other than allowing people to see who you really are."
"I’m not sure all the whimpering and crying I did is how I want to present myself," I said wryly, and told him I’d have to think about releasing the log, but I could live with the other arrangement since it’s obvious that a lot of people are still treating The Hidden War as the Gospel of Devlin.
It surprised me that the military could sell the right to broadcast its records, and asked Maze whether it would be simpler to just release the summary information direct instead of filtering it through The Hidden War. And that’s an option. Kaoren is firm on this being entirely my decision. I think he knows that in part I just don’t want to look at my log for that period, because it’s hour upon hour of me being scared and helpless and right now I’m avoiding scared and helpless.
I might be firm about wanting to stay, but locating the gate to Earth left me with a bad case of nostalgia, so after dinner I asked if I could do some expanded senses projection practice, and recorded some Earth video clips for the entertainment of those squads who were awake after their adventures with time zone adjustment. Just a few songs – Mika’s Grace Kelly and Love Today, and Radiohead’s Exit Music for a Film. It was the first time I’d projected anything in front of the kids, and they seemed very interested – Sen was particularly interested in the piano in the Grace Kelly clip, so I made one for her, and muzzily watched her pound it until I fell asleep, and now it’s almost dawn. We’re heading out in a couple of hours to assist in the opening of the new marble location.
Mmm
Stinky hot weather during the exploration at Pelamath, worse after the violent downpour during the afternoon, which was soon after we arrived since that time zone’s well ahead of Pandora’s. There wasn’t room in the canyon for a camp to be set up – at least not until they eat some whitestone buildings into the canyon walls – so the base camp and ship (the Mesara) was on top of the plateau and the Setari did a lot of lugging people and things up and down because they’re so much quicker and more efficient than the fliers, and didn’t have to be loaded.
Fourth and First (and me) scouted out two other entrances to the underground structure – from initial scans it seems to be set up in much the same way as Arenrhon, just with a slightly different entrance system – and found ancient stairways built into the walls of the cliffs. All terribly crumbly now, and one of the entrances was buried under rubble until Maze cleared it.
The technicians had had plenty of practice at Arenrhon, and had the shielding for the first door ready to be taken down by the time we’d arrived back from marking and clearing the other two. It looks like this is going to be a repeat of Arenrhon, since the interior of the first level was basically identical. Exploration was uneventful, just sad. So many bodies, desiccated and nameless, and crowded again at the entrance. I could see the echoes of their deaths settle on Kaoren with the gentle impact of an anvil – and Inisar and Halla were equally as white-lipped.
We returned to Pandora a little after lunch, since they’ve decided not to risk night work, and Kaoren was stressed enough to need me a great deal. We spent a very long time in the shower, and then decided to wander over to the talent school to see what the kids were doing.
Sen was out by the lake with her age-group class of newly plugged-in Nurans, having a dance lesson. That was fascinating to watch, because not only did each child have their own personal miniaturised instructor, but the interface was projecting robes with long, long sleeves which they could whirl about and make shapes and patterns. It looked wonderful, and though I didn’t join in the dance, I tried out one of the robes, and discovered the wonderful world of projected fantasy clothing. Projected clothing even feels a little like it’s really there, stimulating the sense of touch, though not quite achieving real weight. I am so going to spend hours playing with that.
The day for Ys and Rye’s age group is now split a session of self-study, a group class, a talent class, and a sport class. They were also in the middle of their first interactive game when we looked in, but sadly not one involving spinning about in floaty clothing. Ys and Rye aren’t at all keen on having more shared classes and likely would have preferred to have remained the only students with the interface.
It was great to see the way Rye’s face lit up when he noticed Kaoren. I do think he likes me as well as Kaoren, but he simply worships Kaoren. Ys just ignored us after a long glance. We were a fairly disruptive influence on the attention of the rest of the class, though, so it was a good thing the day’s lessons were nearly over. Collecting Sen as well, we walked back via the top of the hill, where I out-squee’d everyone over the discovery of hummingbirds feeding on the tree’s flowers. They were very tiny and very amazing – something I’d only seen on TV before.
And I’m finally back for our evening routine, so I don’t have to feel guilty about using Mara as a babysitter. She’s itching to be shifted back to active duty, and will probably be cleared soon. It was a good evening, especially since neither of us were tired, so after Sen had gone to sleep and Ys and Rye had buried themselves once again in the interface, Kaoren and I had a lot of time to be glad to have each other. We also caught up on a chunk of diary reading, reaching the big assembly of Setari being told about me. It was the second time I’d met Kaoren. It seems like an eternity ago, when he was merely one of the huge array of new people I was dealing with, and I was just a curiosity to him.
Thursday, September 18
I Spy…
Today was a poke Devlin at it day.
We were up early again and off to Pelamath, where they’d already opened the second and third levels and were working on the difficult fourth – the idea being to work our way quickly down to the bottom and turn off the shielding – and then erect a KOTIS-approved shield in a bubble over the top of the marble, so that no Cruzatch can use it to come through.