Another training day, with projection work in the afternoon. We went out to Keszen Point this time, and I recreated the first visualisation I’d done, of the museum Kaoren had described, this time with my senses expanded. Then the requisite nap in medical. Going to sleep in the afternoon and then waking up and being groggy till evening is annoying, but it’s preferable to the maybe dying thing. Preferable to the look I’ve seen in Kaoren’s eyes when he’s contemplating what they can and can’t do if this goes wrong.
I had a swimming lesson to wake me up today, at least. I’d arranged with Zan (who is on a completely opposite shift and so had only just got out of bed) to meet me and Kaoren at the pool to give the kids another lesson. We needed three because that pool has no shallow areas, and I knew the sheer formidable depth of it would make it more than daunting for the kids. Their eyes turned to absolute saucers when they looked down into it, and down, and down. But Sen was okay so long as she could cling to me, while Rye’s desire to win Kaoren’s approval only grows, and I don’t think Ys can stand to show she’s afraid of things.
Zan was fantastic with Ys. She’s so calm and non-threatening and small, yet very sure and commanding when she wants to be. And, I think, Ys doesn’t have such a big emotional barrier built up against anyone but me and Kaoren, so was able to concentrate more on the swimming part and less on not giving an inch to me.
The main thing I wanted to teach them was how to get out of a pool, and then kicking and turning their heads to breathe while we held them. Sen was totally unkeen on being face-down in water, and I didn’t push her since she’s only young, just had her practice dog paddle again. Rye’s gained a lot of confidence in the water, and I think he’s enjoying swimming more for its own sake now, and not merely because it’s time spent with Kaoren and earns him approving nods.
After the kids tired, we had them sit on the side of the pool and had a race across and back, which Kaoren won easily. Zan pwned me as well – she’s obviously been practicing hard. Still, I kept up, and it was fun, especially because I briefly had the lead because I dive and do the turn better than them both (though, knowing Kaoren, he’ll have perfected that before our next swim).
Good timing reading my diary tonight, since we’d reached the point where Zan was doing lessons with me in the pool. Kaoren was both very amused at the way I described Kajal and Forel, and hugely unimpressed with their behaviour. If Zan had been too severely impacted by their bullying, it was perfectly possible her distraction could have gotten her squad killed. We had another of our almost-arguments, since Kaoren thought Selkie needed to know, and I was pretty firmly of the opinion that Selkie already knows what both of them are like and that my world would be even more circumscribed if people felt they couldn’t trust me not to replay everything they did in front of me. We’re doing okay with our occasional disagreements – probably because we haven’t yet hit anything where neither of us will give ground. Kaoren had to cede this one – my diary reading is something utterly private between us, and he won’t act on anything I tell him unless I agree to it.
Explaining the Orlando Bloom Meter to Kaoren was about a 7 on the Excruciating Scale, and I was glad to stop reading so Kaoren could catch up on the mass of reports he’s supposed to review. I’m going to work some more on the Q&A thing for The Hidden War, which I’ve decided to answer fairly detailed in some things and not at all in others (particularly questions about the kids). But I think I’ll make it a condition that they have to release the Q&A to the public after they’ve made their episodes. And I’m going to have fun writing up how upset I got because someone stole my personal file and turned it into TV.
Thursday, September 25
Gravity
Again no drama overnight, and fortunately no nightmares for Sen. Breakfast was all about Tare’s endless sunset, and another discussion of planetary rotation. I find it very weird how the day-night cycle on Tare is so long, yet the year so quick. We ended up deep in explanations of gravity and centrifugal forces and the fact that the entire universe is moving.
Ys and Rye seem less reluctant to go to the Kalrani school than they were attending the talent school at Pandora. Not keenly eager, but treating it as a task like cleaning up after breakfast. They’re the neatest damn kids – except Sen, who is mess on legs and has provided me with the challenge of teaching Ys and Rye not to clean up after her. Kaoren or I clean up Sen’s mess, or Sen cleans up Sen’s mess. Theoretically.
I spent the day finishing off the Q&A. There were tons of questions about me and Kaoren, all about when and where and why and how we felt about each other during every single event, and I’m sure that they’ll be disappointed that I simply added dates for when I first felt for him, and when he first felt for me, and when we got together.
Most of the other questions I answered a little more helpfully, although there’s quite a lot of things I would only go to the edge of (not describing the kids, or other Setari, or certain aspects of my talents). I took considerable pleasure describing how upset and violated I’d felt about my file-napping. Kaoren and Maze and probably a whole bunch of other people will review it before it goes to the show’s producers, and I’m sure I’ll regret some of the things I wrote down. I thought for a long time, and then agreed to release the Kalasa log as well. I’m not entirely comfortable with it, but I guess it will stop some of the more exaggerated stories about what I did there, and at least it won’t be distorted by reinterpretation. It saves Se-Ahn Surat from a complete water-logging.
Today’s test was to simply have me expand my senses until my centre went vague, which I did without trouble or incident. Now KOTIS Command is having fun arguments about what the next test should be, and whether they can risk taking me into the Ena, and whether they dare take me back to Muina to see if I can help unravel more of its mysteries. So I’m back where I was before we last headed to Muina, frustrated at not being able to do anything useful, with the need to find a solution only growing more urgent. If there is a solution to be found. First and Fourth had a rough rotation today – a single six-person squad would have been overwhelmed. I’m not very keen to go through all that vomiting again, but having everyone I know fight harder and harder battles until someone gets killed is even worse. I keep checking the news for new discoveries coming out of Pandora, but the most I’ve heard is that the nanite factory is close to activation, and that more of the Nurans are accepting the interface. There’s not even news about the splinter group.
I’m shying away from reading other news at the moment, and have been ploughing through more schoolwork instead. The rate that Ys and Rye are shaping up, they’ll end up passing my Taren school level in a couple of years, which would be a little embarrassing. I keep telling myself I’ve graduated from high school back home, and am about to be paid an enormous amount of money, and there’s no need to study geometry during a galactic apocalypse. And, yet, studying.
Friday, September 26
Ball
Weird dream last night. Not the rush-to-medical type, and not a projection, but a bit like when I was dreaming of Kaoren at Kalasa. I was dreaming of a bunch of children playing, kicking and tossing a ball made of cloth (a hacky sack?) to each other. Dressed in non-tech clothes, which could mean Nurans or old Muinans, and most of them the same gold-brown skin, black-eyed, black-haired type as Kaoren and Sen. There was a girl watching them, standing at the top of some whitestone stairs leading to a walkway, and although physically she was far more like Sen, she reminded me so much of Ys – that fiercely shut down expression, the stubborn don’t-need-these-people attitude. She was dressed a good deal more formally and expensively than the other kids, and I could see her working herself up, until finally she strode down the stairs and into the courtyard area where the children were playing.