And then another wave of light came pouring out, filling the entire space with white, and I heard the Setari who’d been watching me gasp, and Nels said: "Tzatch," which Lohn tells me is a shortened version of Tzarazatch, a spiritual concept on Tare kind of like Ragnarok: the destructive end of everything. I can’t get Lohn to tell me any real swear words, but he explains the milder ones.
For about thirty seconds there was nothing but whiteness, and it didn’t even look like it was going to settle as it had the first time, but then it thinned abruptly and was sucked away to nothing, back into the Pillar, leaving the space as clear and empty as it had been the first time I saw it, except for all the unconscious Setari. I was noticeably absent from the doorway.
The fragment of the log finished, and I looked back up at Maze and then blinked, confused. His face was set and furious, a muscle working in his cheek. Zee was staring at him, as surprised as I was, and when she touched his arm he flinched away, then said: "Watch her log," and turned his back, getting himself under control.
Of course, that immediately made me watch it myself, jumping straight to the last bit I remembered: closing the right half of the door. It’s highly disorienting to watch things you don’t remember doing. I only remember stepping forward, don’t remember at all looking into the interior of the Pillar. Most of it was taken up by the central core, with empty space curving off to the right and left. There was a rounded rectangular hatch just about at head height on the internal column, with two big white levers set into the stone below it. By big I mean almost as long as my leg, sticking out of grooves that ran to the right around the Pillar’s core.
The hatch was designed to slide, and was open a crack on the right hand side, making a brilliant white vertical line from which aether drifted down. And as I looked up at that, something interrupted the vertical line, a few black spots blocking the brightness. Fingertips, claws, curving around the hatch from the inside. Then it pulled it open, the movement accompanied by a shifting rumble from the levers, and everything went white.
A black hand shape appeared in view: my hand, trying to block out the light and not really succeeding. And then I must have gone forward, under the main intensity of the blast into the drifting mist of aether falling down from it. The top lever had gone left as the hatch opened, and I seem to have tried pushing it back to the right but wasn’t succeeding. Then I looked upward, into the spotlight glare of white coming out of the hatch, and there was this barely visible human shape, just the head, and shoulders, the arm hooked over the edge of the hatch, reaching. The scene dropped down abruptly – I must have ducked – and then moved right, pushing the lower lever instead of the top, with an accompanying rumble which was loud enough to suggest huge boulders grinding together, stopping with a nicely final thud followed by a hiss and a howling wind noise. The only thing I was looking at, at this point, was the floor, really close to my face. I levered myself partially upright, turned toward the door, and dropped again; must have fallen flat on my ass. Then my hand came up and covered my left eye and lifted away to show rather a lot of red and I bent forward, the scene becoming barely visible. I guess all that aether wasn’t doing enough to block whatever having your eye self-destruct feels like. The last moments of the mission log don’t show much, because I’d closed my eyes, but you can hear me panting and then I say, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light?" and let out this confused-sounding laugh and then the log stops abruptly.
"Glad don’t remember that," I said, after a moment. Maze had stopped looking upset, but Zee had taken his place: not so angry, but eyes wide and mouth pale. "Is thing in Pillar same Lights Rotation?"
"Cruzatch," Maze said, and you could hear the hate in his voice, and see him make the effort to put it aside. The word means "burning", with overtones of destruction.
"There are several spaces they appear, and they also roam. They’re not the only human-form Ionoth we encounter, not the only ones which intelligently react to us. But we have – for a long time there has been discussion about the level of their awareness of the Setari, and whether they retain and learn from previous encounters with us."
"The last massive to break into real-space was accompanied by a Cruzatch," Zee explained. "Almost as if it was riding it. Guiding it." She sighed. "The idea of there being organisation among the Ionoth is not accepted by many."
And certainly hadn’t been mentioned in any of the stories and movies I’d so far seen. "Organised not, that one bloody annoying. What happen it?"
Maze made an equivocal motion with one hand. "No sign. We think you closed the intake of the Pillar’s power stream. We’re not entirely certain why all the aether was pulled back, but the entire Pillar seems to have shut down as a result." He smiled at the expression on my face. "No need to look like that: it’s what we would have tried eventually, if not so soon, and the only thing we’ve really lost is the chance to study the Pillar in more depth. Everyone’s off-rotation, only clearing near-space, because it seems that the surrounding spaces are shifting, and we can’t trust the gates. But you did well, Caszandra. And were very brave."
Although that was hugely gratifying, I doubted it was true. "Blind drunk panic more like," I said. "Don’t remember either way."
"What was it you said before the log cut out?" Zee asked, leaning forward to touch my leg and then stopping. Definitely orders not to touch me.
"Is line famous poem about dying." I repeated it in English, because it makes it slightly easier to work out a translation, then did my best to render it in Taren. "Funny thing say but fit guess. Was really drunk."
I must have fallen asleep then, and had uncomfortable dreams about what I’d seen in my log, and about Maze being angry, and of running and hiding from something chasing me. None of it pleasant, in other words. I keep having dreams like that. Otherwise, being in the med section is the same tedious crap that it always is. The greysuits say I have to stay here because all the bruising means I’m at risk of blood clots. I spent the first couple of days sleeping and coughing up black stuff – blood and phlegm and discarded bits of interface, apparently – and having to move about a lot because it’s good for my circulation.
Everyone from First Squad came to visit me, as well as Zan, still looking tired, but no longer all stressed out. I asked her if she would bring me my diary, and she did, and sat and talked with me a while and was all proper and Zan-like, but just that tiny bit more human than before. I think if I’d died she would have felt responsible, because she’d ultimately given me the order to go. And maybe that she does like me, a little bit anyway.
I’ve been doing school lessons. I don’t really feel like watching shows or the news because the news is full of the impact of shutting the Pillar down, even though it’s been kept secret. The Setari squads have been distributed over Tare because that’s the only way they can effectively patrol the near-space when they can’t use other spaces as shortcuts to get about, which means that there’s more sightings of them, and more outbreaks of Ionoth into the real world. I did that.
I still feel pretty horrible too: tired and sore. Every time I get close to being fit, I nearly die and go back to the start again. And I look like a pirate junkie panda, with a patch and a huge ring around my uncovered eye. It was purple, but now it’s going green with hints of yellow.