Until I can figure out how to safely get home, I’ll just have to put up with it, but I did need to degrump myself before leaving to meet Mara. The Setari are assigned rotations every second day, so I’ll be going into the Ena again tomorrow, and I’m scheduled in for three more rotations with First Squad after that. Between I have training and medical appointments. In a few days I also have a session scheduled with Eighth Squad and later Third Squad, to review my effect on their talent list. Then a day with nothing scheduled, but I’m not sure if it counts as a day off or they just haven’t put anything there yet.
This morning I had swimming with Mara, and Zee and Ketzaren came along as well. They’re all so incredibly fit. I can just about beat them if I swim freestyle while they breaststroke, but even though they’ve only been swimming a couple of years they outpace me easily if we’re doing the same stroke. Mara’s such a taskmaster – after we played around for a while she made me do laps while she monitored my heartbeat. And then she scheduled in some running for me as well, for afternoons, though she says I don’t have to wait for any of them to join me for that. Running is not my idea of fun, though I think maybe I could do my schoolwork at the same time as running, which is useful, or watch television or whatever.
I’m doing quite well with this year’s schoolwork, though I’m not pushing through it nearly as hard as I did the previous year’s. And I’m starting to find my way around all the vast array of the parts of the interface which I now have access to. I watch news programs, and am constantly surprised by stories of violence. I kept imagining this place as relatively crime-free, especially thanks to second level monitoring, but bad things still happen here. And there’s sports reporting, and gossip and politics and business, all of which is this mass of confusion to me because they don’t explain who the people are and I have to look them up to work out what’s going on. I usually don’t bother, just let all the sounds wash over me while I look at the images.
With the entertainment options and discussion boards and games there’s so much out there that I’ve been too overwhelmed to do more than browse. I read the beginnings of books, watch the beginnings of shows, follow links, but keep moving on. Schoolwork comes as a relief after that because it’s so structured. I started watching that Setari/Songstar show that Nenna liked so much, but it’s really silly and young. I found a different one called The Hidden War which is also about the Setari, but much more serious and with no singing so far. There are years and years of it, though, and while I found out how to watch it from the beginning, I’ve only skipped through a couple of episodes. It starts out with this girl called Nori being in the not-yet-qualified-as-a-Setari part of KOTIS, and I’ll probably go back to it when I’m in a better mood.
The planet is seriously obsessed with the Setari. It’s not surprising. Earth would be the same, but give them less privacy[2]. As it is, I’ve found these huge discussion boards which are all about people talking about sightings of Setari. They can’t take photographs of them, and their name display shows random names, but every sighting of them is tracked, and people draw pictures using art programs. It’s very rare for Setari to be seen anywhere except Konna, and rarer still for them to go out in uniform. Hordes of people want to live on Konna, just because of the Setari. I already felt, the couple of times I’ve been into the city, the sense of lots of people watching, and the extra-smile factor of shop assistants, but it’s apparently against some kind of rule to run up and ask the Setari for autographs, which is fortunate or they probably wouldn’t be able to go out at all.
There were descriptions of our Kanza game on those forums. There were great big dossiers on First Squad. They don’t know what they’re called or anything, but they’ve given them all code names and link the sightings together, and now there’s a dossier started on me. They think I’m a Kalrani or newly graduated Setari, or possibly just a relative of someone in First Squad. I spent lunch reading through a bunch of posts of people giving really frank opinions of what I looked like (6/10) and how I acted. 6! I think I’m a 7, really, but I guess I was standing next to Zee a lot of the time.
It amazes me that any of the Setari ever poke their noses out of KOTIS.
Sunday, February 17
Lights Rotation
Today’s rotation was called Lights Rotation.
The first space was up on a mountain, all grass and tumbled rocks and flowers on a slope so high there was cloud below. We’re settling into a routine for being a squad-with-useful-stray. Before going through each gate, Mara and Maze, who both have Combat Sight and Speed talent, touch my arm to enhance themselves, then take lead. They go through as close together as they can, and just like when I was with Ruuel, the rest of us only come through when they signal.
This time, as soon as Maze was through, he dived abruptly left – so fast it was almost like he vanished – and something flashed after him. Mara followed in a rush, and just as quickly ran right, her Light whip striking out from one hand. None of the rest of First Squad enjoyed staying put, but they did, very tense and prepared. I was wondering how long they had to wait before going without a signal, but Mara came back almost straight away and Lohn and Zee went through followed by me and my Ketzaran/Alay escort. Lohn brushed a hand against my arm and was off.
The things they were fighting were like gargoyles. Or bats with wolfish faces, all grey-skinned. The sky above the mountainside was thick with them, and they dived like hawks, incredibly fast. Ketzaren’s Wind manipulation abilities were really useful there. It’s not the same kind of instant-hit that Lohn’s Light wall is, but if she sets up enough movement in the air, it grows to cyclonic levels. It made it incredibly hard for the gargoyles to fly, and funnelled them together really handily.
That space was huge, too. It took almost an hour for First Squad to chase down all the gargoyles, and I noticed a few escaped through other gates, and that one of the things First Squad were trying to do was prevent that, although they wouldn’t chase them through the gates. It was also by far the worst time I’d had with First Squad, because there’s no way slaughtering a couple of hundred animals could be anything but awful. The Ionoth might just be memories, but they still don’t want to be killed. Being Setari is a really horrible job.
It was only when the very last of them was gone that First Squad said anything more than "There," or "To the left". Maze called for a break, and we all sat down on some rocks and had a drink and some of the molasses-tasting food bars. Using their powers takes an awful lot out of the Setari, especially over such a long period of time, and they were sweating and looking drained. In a way it annoys me that it doesn’t take me any effort to enhance them. I’d feel less like a useless spectator if it at least made me tired.
"That was more than twice as many as the last time we did this space," Zee said, after drinking thirstily.
Maze nodded. "I’ll recommend reclassification of the rotation."
"Don’t understand how ecology work here," I said. "Do Ionoth need eat? Or just attack people out habit?"
"It varies," Lohn said. "In some spaces the Ionoth don’t have any apparent food source, and we’ve never verified if they have to eat, but they often turn on each other or start to roam, preying on whatever they can find until separation from their home space causes them to fade. There are others, roamers and static, which are not aggressive and don’t have any interest in us at all. If we do Boulders Rotation, you’ll see the Tenders. They notice but never attack us, so we leave them be, as we do anything not classified as a threat."