The four squad captains on this trip were a soap opera in the making. Forel seems to want to impress Ruuel. Ruuel, well, I don’t know for sure, but he seems to spend an awful lot of time with Taarel. I’m trying to pretend that doesn’t really mean anything. Taarel, at least that one time while we were out in the city, seems intense about Maze. And Maze isn’t playing romance any more.
Not having seen this at the time, I just shrugged off the whole thing and went back to thinking about poetry translations and the embarrassment involved in walking around my town with an escort of twenty-four psychic space ninjas who all seemed to think far more was going to happen than I did. I can’t say I ever held great expectations for the outing, given that I’d lived there for a month, and the Setari had already gone over the place, if only casually. I wasn’t the least surprised when we all went down underneath the amphitheatre and found no monsters, just a short white corridor which curved down to an empty circular room with a round, thigh-high platform in the middle. I was pondering the less-than-fun prospect of returning to do this again, except with me probably having to get drunk on aether again, when Sefen from Third looked across at Ruuel and said: "I don’t even begin to understand what I’m seeing here."
"It feels like a gate," Taarel said. "But–"
"No, not a gate." Ruuel moved to my left and touched my arm, frowning. "Far more complex. The Ena is tangible here."
Maze, who had been toting one of the replacement drones about with Telekinesis, lowered it to the ground by the outer wall. "We did expect to find an outlet for the aether, after all." He checked that the drone was stable and turned it on, verifying with the Litara that the ship was receiving the drone’s transmission. "If it’s some sort of device in addition to that, what’s your evaluation of function?"
There was a bit of shifting about, as the rest of the Place and Symbol Sight talents took the opportunity to enhance themselves and view the platform from different angles. Maze was running scans with the drone. To me it looked like nothing more than a platform: there were even steps up one side.
"Communication," Ruuel said eventually, and there were a few hesitant nods of agreement.
"Getting an aether reading from it," Maze commented, then said over the interface: "Orders?"
The bluesuit in charge, Tehara, said: "Take contact readings, but no more until we return. Analysis of the scans taken in the interim may give us a better idea of how to approach it."
Between them the two Sight squads had four Place Sight talents. "Go unenhanced, Sefen," Taarel said. "We’re still not entirely certain if there is any distortion in play for enhanced Sights."
He nodded while the other three – Ruuel, Halla and Marana – made their gloves flow back into the sleeves of their suits. Place Sight talents often go about fully gloved, since touching an object can give them a deeper reading, like when Ruuel was handling my diary back in medical. I’ve seen enough of The Hidden War now to know that Place Sight talents have a great deal of difficulty with the information they can sense, and avoid accidentally touching people and objects. The actor on the show is always being fraught and sensitive and locked down.
Marana, a short but muscular girl from Third Squad, was first to try, but drew her hand back immediately. "Aether effect," she said, frowning.
Halla and Ruuel both tried, but you could see it was hurting them just pressing their fingers lightly against the stone surface and they quickly stopped.
"Try nullifying the negative effects with Devlin while reading," Taarel suggested, but then she – everyone with Combat Sight – went on alert, saying: "Threat," out loud.
Most of them stepped back away from the platform, creating the nanoliquid blades from their suits. I stepped back as well, aware of Ketzaren and Alay shifting to flank me, and then covered my ears at the sound which followed. Whale song has nothing on it.
"Approaching rapidly," Maze said, fortunately in a pause in the noise. "Overwhelming threat. Get Devlin out of here."
Ketzaren started to move, but Ruuel was faster. He didn’t have time to be careful, just grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward, pressing my hand down on the platform. The noise changed, just as loud, but a different pitch, and everyone reacted as if they’d missed being bitten by a shark. Ruuel said something, eyes gone all narrow and extra-black, and I didn’t even try and raise my voice to respond, saying: "Can’t hear you over Ddura," even as I realised that I was the only one acting like I’d been trapped in a belltower at the wrong moment.
"It’s a communication device," came in text through the interface. "Communicate."
The logs attached to the mission report have twenty different views of the look I gave him in response. An "Are you high?" caption would fit it well. I was actually thinking "In whale song?" But what was I going to do? Say no? Especially since everyone was acting as if the shark was circling for another run.
Being suddenly expected to do something instead of standing around was disconcerting to the max. I bought some time closing my eyes and trying to sort out what I was hearing. The Ddura noise was so drawn out and huge it was hard to encompass it. But I was sure it wasn’t words, not anything I had a chance of recognising. It was repeating the same long hhhhuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaa over and over. It felt like a question. The Ddura had stopped attacking when I touched the platform and was asking me something. So I tried to guess what an artificially created aurora cloud built to kill monsters would ask someone who showed up and tried to talk to it.
As always it sounded sad, mournful. I had no idea if it really was, or if it that was its noise for growling boisterously, but the idea led to one obvious possibility: everyone on the planet had left. If I thought of it as a big (huge-mungous) dog which had been bred to protect the Muinans, and then abandoned, then it would be all where is everyone, what should I do, I’m so lonely, please love me. Sheer guesswork, but treating it like a dog was the only thing I could think of in the middle of all that noise.
Since the noise was apparently in my head, I didn’t bother trying to speak, just started thinking over and over: "Shut up! Shut up! Be quiet! Shut up! Quiet! Quiet!"
To my eternal surprise it tapered off, making a brief eager hhhhhaaaaaaa sound. "Good Ddura," I thought, feeling mildly idiotic. "Good Ddura. Be quiet. Good Ddura."
I opened my eyes, trying to think while my head recovered from its noise-pounding, and looking across at the Setari on the far side of the platform, who were watching me intently. Immediately the Ddura made a hhhhiiiiiiiiiiii noise, not nearly so loud, but all anxious and fretful and then, "mmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn".
"Threat rising," Maze said, tersely.
"Stop!" I thought. "Down. Friends! Friends!"
It made the hhhiiiiiiiii noise again. It wanted to protect me, I think. And that was the problem: it didn’t recognise the Tarens, it thought they were the enemy the same way the aether did. And it’s pretty hard to convince a dog that the scary strangers all poised to attack are friends.
Keeping my right hand on the platform, I reached to the left. Ruuel had let go of me – I later found some nice bruises where he’d grabbed me – so I took his wrist and pressed his hand to the platform, keeping hold the same way I had Selkie during my aether testing. "Friend," I thought, then carefully let go of Ruuel, watching him wince as the aether in the platform immediately began reacting to him.
"Friend," I thought, but was getting the hhhiiii noise again. "Friend," I repeated, putting a lot of command into it. "This is a Muinan. He belongs here. This is his home. He belongs."