Stray (11 page)

"Can go outside?"  I asked immediately.

I could see that surprised her.  People really just don't go outside much, on this planet.  "It's night phase at the moment."

"That bad thing?"

"Well..."  She shrugged, and led me to the elevator that led to the corridor that led to the walkway that led to the quickest elevator to the roof.  It's not nearly so huge as Unara, but the KOTIS building mound is still pretty damn big.  It can't all be Setari facilities, even with all the not-yet Setari who are being trained somewhere.

It was very cold and windy on the bit of roof we ended up on.  It feels even more like being on the side of a big mountain than going to Unara's roof did.  Unara's more an endless blocky roundness, while the Institute is closer to the water and you can really see the
down
.  But you could also see up since the sky was clear for once and so I found a convenient edge and sat down and stared up looking for any constellations I recognised.  I would like to at least be able to stare in the direction of Earth.

"This is similar to your world?"  Zan asked after a while.  Even she can't just sit and not say anything forever.

"Not my part."  I supposed Scotland might look like that, if you covered it with buildings.  "Australia – big sky, red dirt, blue sea, lots beaches, huge empty inland.  Deserts and tropical forests and...harsh, thirsty country.  And then flood."  I shrugged.  "Out here because never not gone outside ever.  Walk to school.  Go to beach.  Garden.  What you do when not being Setari?"

I'd asked her before, but she'd ignored the question.  This time Zan sighed, ever-so-softly.  "If you want to talk, go inside out of this cold.  I'm supposed to be watching your health."

But, of course, as soon as we got back inside someone called her away.  And it's back to kindergarten in a box. 

Tuesday, January 29

Bored Spitless

I suck at learning languages.  Other than English, the only one I even begin to know is sign language, and even with that I spend a lot of time spelling words out because I don't know the sign.  It annoys me, because I have a good memory, but there's a difference between remembering and knowing something, I guess.

Despite having an entire dictionary in my head cheating for me when I listen to Taren, I'm struggling to 'know' the words.  I know yes and no and hello.  And new words like Muina and Setari seem to have sunk in far better than 'bed' or 'morning'.  Which is all just a whiny lead-up to saying I figured out how to trigger those interface tests and still can't pass because it takes me too long to phrase answers.  I need multiple choice answer tests!  What kind of planet gives kindergarteners tests this hard?

I can only do the tests once a day, so now I'm sitting around hoping Zan will show up and still be willing to talk.  And feeling a bit annoyed with her for not coming back yesterday.  And wondering what her other duties are beyond babying me.  It looked to me like she doesn't get on with the rest of her squad, or at least not that obnoxious blond guy.

I wonder what they'd do if I drew patterns on the walls?  Everything on this planet is so undecorated and white because they use interface 'skins' as their decoration.  I've been trying to work out if the buildings are made of the same whitestone as the buildings on Muina.  They don't look anywhere near as simple, of course, but they feel the same to touch.

*sulks*

Bleh.  Instead of training, I had medical examinations this afternoon.  More scans and blood tests and seeing how my heart is going and dull and uncomfortable as hell.

One thing, though – I don't think any of the Setari have told anyone else what my Lab Rat symbol means.  At least, Ista Tremmar didn't pay any more attention to it than last time, and wasn't giving me psych tests or anything. 

Wednesday, January 30

Tactics

Zan likes 'classical' music.  I should have guessed: it fits in with her being all serious and proper.  They call classical music 'orchestral music' (tennanam anam).  The instrument Zan plays is called a Tyu and looks and sounds to me a lot like a zither, but is larger than the zither they had in the music room at primary school – about the size of an A3 sheet of paper, but much thicker of course – and has softer strings which she plucks.  It's made of wood, which is super rare on Tare.  I think it's probably rare to have an actual musical instrument, as well, rather than playing a virtual something in a virtual space.

I was just as interested in her rooms.  I had been picturing all the Setari stuck in little boxes like mine, but Zan had a small apartment: one bedroom, but with a separate lounge-kitchen combo and a study nook thing and a larger bathroom than mine – bathtub!  I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.  You can apply for adult rights at 50 (almost 17) here, and the Setari are a few steps above an ordinary sort of soldier.  Keeping them permanently in barracks or whatever probably wouldn't have worked.

Anyway, I thought Zan's apartment was wonderful.  She's decorated it in muted shades of green and blue (the public space, that is) with curling patterns which look a bit like ferns that shift and wind about.  And she has a cat!  A cat like that screensaver cat that drops down from the top of your screen and wanders about, except this one wanders about Zan's entire apartment, and is blue-green to blend in with the walls.  You can sort of pat it, even, because your interface will pretend like you're touching something.  I asked if there were real cats on Tare and she said a few brought from a planet called Kolar.  Only the really rich can possibly have actual pets.

I'm not under any illusion that Zan suddenly wants to be friends.  She's been given me as an assignment, and she still acts exactly like I'm an assignment, just that the assignment has been expanded to my mental health as well as physical fitness and dodging.  I don't know whether I like her or not, beyond that she's the only person on this freaking planet that I see on a near-daily basis.  I can't remember hanging out with any super-serious girls in the past, let alone someone who is part of the military and kills for a living.  She makes me curious though.

After this we went and had another stepping session, and I waited till she was escorting me back to my room before I asked her again: "Setari competitive why?"  And when she paused, since this was definitely not the sort of question she was likely to answer, I added: "Your squad, why unhappy, holiday?"

"The Setari don't compete directly," Zan said eventually.  "But how we perform
affects privileges, which assignments we are given, and even whether we remain on active duty.  Fighting in the Ena is greatly preferred to the more basic duty which is usual on Tare, and not simply because being in the Ena makes us feel…twice as alive.  Twelfth Squad had only just been activated for Ena assignments, but were transferred to training routines, and are very disappointed."

"Mostly fight Ena, not planet?"

"The whole concept of the Setari is to prevent anything from the Ena reaching this world.  And to find a way to fix the fractures which have made it so easy for the walls around this world to be crossed."  She looked even more than ordinarily serious.  "The numbers increase every year and the fractures are widening.  Working on Tare, it's just clean-up unless there's a major outbreak.  The war is beyond this world."

That was a good deal more dramatic than I'd been expecting.  Where I'm going to be placed in this war is something too large to think about. 

Thursday, January 31

A proper history lesson

I passed the stupid interface test!  Only just – I still didn't finish a lot of the questions, but I got almost all the ones I did answer right.  So I now have a new year of school to plough through.  Still no entertainment channels or anything, but a small library of children's 'textbooks', which is good.  I much prefer being able to freely read the books than to sit through the pre-set lessons and their snippets of information.  A thorough browse has given me a lot more background and a better explanation of just what happened on Muina and what the situation on Tare is now.

So, whatever it was happened on Muina happened thousands of
Taren
years ago.  They're pretty imprecise about exactly how long ago it was, because they went through a really rough and chaotic first few decades on Tare, so don't have a very good written record.  Kolar is the other main planet which properly remembers being from Muina, but its early records are no better than Tare's.  The best I can make out, the evacuation from Muina was between 1500 and 2000 Earth years ago.  So ha! to the idea of Earth having been populated by people from Muina – the Egyptian pyramids are over 3000 years old and that barely scratches the surface of Earth's archaeological and fossil record.  I guess it is possible that some Muinans came to Earth long before that, but we definitely weren't part of the evacuation dispersal.  I never believed that, no matter how similar I am to them genetically.  It still makes
vastly
more sense to me for the Muinans to have originally come from Earth, especially because Tare's population also reflects some of Earth's races.

'Lantar' doesn't refer to the entire population of Muina, either, but to a psychic ruling caste which caused the disaster that made Muina uninhabitable.  Back then the Ionoth monsters were only an issue for these ruling Lantar (Lantarens?) when they travelled between planets.  It's not clear why they were travelling between planets, but it was common enough that they started a huge planet-wide project to make it easier: creating a little network of permanently aligned wormholes.  The result of this was like if you decided to stop earthquakes in California by nailing the tectonic plates together: everything started to rip apart around the nails.

The tearing allowed things from the Ena to more easily get to Muina, where they liked to throw themselves on people and eat them.  The Lantarens couldn't immediately undo what they'd done because the places where they'd constructed the main supports of their interplanetary superhighway had been flooded with too many Ionoth.  So they built these things called Ddura – the massives the Setari are so interested in investigating – which are artificial Ionoth whose job was to clear out Ionoth from the supports and from Muina.  But they immediately lost control of the Ddura, and the situation on Muina began spiralling into chaos: whole villages and cities of people inexplicably dropping dead, and more and more Ionoth coming through and eating people.

All the Lantarens on Muina had a big 'teleconference' (hehe!) and decided they had to leave Muina.  They couldn't all manage to go to the same place, and it doesn't sound like they wanted to either.  There were some who stayed behind on Muina, but no-one's ever found any trace of them, so they were probably killed.

If you stay too long on Muina, something comes and eats you, or you drop dead.  I'm glad I didn't know all this while I was busy boiling wool.

Stepping it up

The medics have decided I'm more or less recovered, so Zan says we'll have two sessions of training tomorrow.  So funny to be excited about exercising.  I wonder if the Setari have to earn TV privileges as well.

I asked Zan what the Ena looked like, and she said that it's incredibly varied, but that the nearest space looked just like Tare, except without the people.  It's a shadow of this world.  Now that's freaky. 

February

Friday, February 1

Frabjous

This morning was routine.  Though my lessons with Zan are getting a bit more complex, it's still repeating a set of movements over and over again.

But Zan didn't deliver me back to my room afterwards.  Instead we went to lunch in a smallish canteen.  It seems to be a Setari-specific place, though I think the kitchen handles more than just this one room.

It's funny how your aspirations change after being locked in a room for – how long has it been? – nearly a month since Nenna was hurt.  It makes small things like eating in a very plain canteen so exciting.  Being able to pick from a couple of options for my meal instead of having food delivered by a pinksuit under guard made me feel almost human again.  The illusion of choice.

Of course anything, even sitting in a room reliving kindergarten, is better than starving and alone.  Annoying as this place can be, I'm still glad to have been rescued.

The other Setari in the room weren't anyone I particularly recognised, though I guess they'd all been there for the demonstrate-what-the-stray-can-do session.  They pretended not to look at me, and didn't bother us.  It's hard to know what they'd think of me – a walking instant power-up that they've been told to stay away from.

After lunch, I was expecting more 'martial arts' practice, but instead we went down to a different changing room and Zan sent me into one of the shower rooms and told me to braid my hair up and strip and get into the shower.  And when I did, wondering what was going on, black goop sprayed out of the walls at me and that was enough to make me jump back and want out.  And then it started
wriggling
.  I sometimes forget that these people use nanotechnology.  I ended up with a light swimsuit, sturdier than those I'm used to, and going all the way to the knees and elbows.  Thinner than the Setari uniform, but I'm starting to understand how Zan gets changed so quickly.

After I'd recovered from my minor heart attack, we went into the next room and it was this HUGE pool.  A big square, maybe forty by forty metres, but incredibly deep, with this underwater obstacle course, all tunnels and circles and things.  I couldn't even see the bottom.

"This is something I need practice in, as well," Zan said, watching my disbelieving expression.  "The requirement for water manoeuvres only came in two years ago, when some of the nearest spaces became flooded.  The medics recommended this to increase your overall fitness, and it will prepare you in case they do decide to use you in the Ena."

"Not that good at holding breath," I said, extremely dubiously.  I figured I could make the top couple of tunnels and tubes, and that would be it.

"There's breathers for the deep work.  First will be surface swimming.  Are you taught swimming at all on your world?"

I gave her a funny look, then dived in and swam across the pool and back.  I was a little more out of breath than I expected when I reached her, due to my various medical dramas.  But I love swimming.  I'm not Ian Thorpe, but water sports are one of the things I've always been reasonably good at.

"If ever go my world," I told her, treading water.  "Teach you how to surf." 

I'm a better swimmer than Zan is.  And they don't use the freestyle stroke, just breaststroke, so she asked me to teach her.  And we're doing swimming practice every afternoon until further notice.  Today was a great day. 

Saturday, February 2

Ructions

Zan is now teaching me how to fall.  Or how to throw myself on padded mats without too much bruising or unnecessary giggling.  I find it hard to take seriously, and no matter what else I think or feel about Zan, I have to admire her patience.  I think that it's causing her a lot of trouble to babysit me, too, unless the Setari are just plain nasty to each other out of habit.

The nastiness came out during this afternoon's swimming session.  Zan's picking up freestyle quickly (Australian crawl, really, but everyone I know calls it freestyle), but it'll take her a bit to really get into it, so we were having a race with breaststroke.  I'm okay with short races, but if I try and do more than a couple of laps I run out of pep.

But I can beat her in a short dash, and was terribly pleased about it.  Problem was, so were the people watching us.  Three Setari, two guys and a girl, and one of the guys was standing right on the edge of the pool where we touched.  Gave me quite a fright, looking up and finding all this blacksuited leg and chest.  I pushed back from the edge, just as Zan reached it, but they were more interested in her than me anyway.

I don't know if Zan had managed to figure out they were there before she looked up, but from what I could see of her face, she didn't act surprised.

"Truly, Namara, I'm starting to feel embarrassed for you," said the guy.  He had an amazing voice, really beautiful, and so wasted on such a putz.  "Bad enough your squad's been pulled off rotation so you can demonstrate infant-level combat skills, but now you're actually being outdone by a stray."

Zan reminds me of a drowned kitten when she's wet.  Her hair sleeks down and makes her eyes look really big.  The guy was so tall, and Zan being down in the water must have felt at a real disadvantage.  But all she did was move to one side, haul herself easily out, and go pick up one of the towels.

"Can I help you with something, Kajal?"  she asked, once she'd dried her face.

"Not swimming, obviously."  The guy was irritated that he'd not managed to get a reaction out of Zan, but made out he wasn't bothered, laughing.  "Lenton's chances are looking better each day."

The Setari girl standing behind him touched his arm.  "It's an unfortunate situation," she said, in a much more reasonable tone.  "Twelfth Squad may have lost out on this rotation altogether, and Lenton does need to be taught to keep his temper.  Worse still, I doubt the stray will be assigned to Twelfth Squad, if they do use it in the Ena.  It's very unfair on you."

I was glad I'd kept moving away, was at least ten metres from the edge.  Not only was the girl enjoying a few sly digs at Zan while pretending to be nice, but she'd called me
it!
  I'm not totally incapable of understanding the nuances of spoken Taren.  Stupid idiots were acting like I was a performing animal, not a person.

It occurred to me then that I no longer had the function which displays all the names of people over their heads.  A full month after Sa Lents showed me how to use it, and I'd forgotten all about it since the accident.  I don't see what they achieved by making it so I couldn't use it, but it was probably related to me losing almost all the other 'public' functions.  I was able to call up the recorded memory of the Setari briefing, though, and work out that the Kajal guy was captain of the Fifth Squad, and the girl was captain of the Seventh.  The other guy was also from the Seventh Squad.  What they were trying to achieve with all the dick waving I couldn't guess.

At least they left after that, though another person showed up as Zan was turning back toward me.  I was too far away to hear what she said, since her voice was soft, but Zan smiled at her, and then shrugged.  So she's not totally without friends.  I practiced swimming underwater for a couple of minutes, till Zan told me that was enough for the day.  It's going to take a while to get used to people being able to talk in my head when I'm upside-down in a swimming pool.

I didn't bug her with questions while she escorted me back, didn't really feel equal to it.  Was even glad to be back in my room so I could get in the shower and cry myself sick.

I do almost all my crying in the shower.  I'm still not sure how much they monitor me while I'm in my room, and I'm really hoping that I get at least a little privacy.  The shower lets me pretend I'm hiding the bad days.  This was worse than usual.  It's going to be my birthday soon, and Mum had promised to organise a family and friends party at our house, and then Nick, Alyssa and I had permission to go out to actual nightclubs afterwards, so long as we stayed together and friends who hadn't turned eighteen yet didn't come with us.  Nick was coming along to 'protect' us, which I of course thought was a fantastic idea for all the wrong reasons.  Alyssa and I put so much effort into setting that up, all for nothing.

I will never be Cass here.  Even if I was still staying with the Lents, I would always be this 'stray' first and foremost and above everything else.  I have this label and there's no way to take it off.  Even if I adapt to the stupid language and the nanites, all the things I spent years learning, all the stories and people which shaped me aren't here.  No-one's read the novels I've read.  No-one likes the music I like.  No-one on this planet will be able to score people on the Orlando Bloom-meter, the way Alyssa and I used to do with all the cute guys.  The only thing which speaks English is this damn diary, which I guess is why I still keep it.

I'm so homesick I could scream. 

Sunday, February 3

A wan shadow

No training today.  Zan took one look at me this morning and sent me straight for medical exams.  I had to work very hard to convince them that the swimming wasn't the problem, and I look really exhausted and drained just because I couldn't get to sleep.  Leaving out the bit about crying half the night and giving myself the hugest headache in the process.  At least this let me know that they mustn't be monitoring me too closely in my room.

But I ended up spending almost all the day in the medical section, prodded and poked and sitting in machines while they got distracted trying to figure out how my enhancement abilities work.  They've decided that the number of abilities an individual Setari has might increase the strain on my system when I enhance them.  Which is why Zan is training me, since she has only the one.  The experiment enhancing three from First Squad at once messed up so badly because between them those three had seventeen talents.  Maze has eight all on his own, and apparently there's a couple of Setari who have even more.

I took the opportunity to have another argument with Ista Tremmar about why my interface had been cut back so much, and why I couldn't at least have the access I'd had before or straightforward things like being able to see names and so forth, but she just gave me a lecture about qualifying for privileges.  It didn't work to point out that standard access was hardly a privilege, and how stupid it is to run tests which are timed for someone who has been learning their silly language since they were babies.  Of course, my inability to speak that silly language with any fluidity made my arguments less than comprehensible.

Ista Tremmar is very strict and by-the-book about a lot of things, but she did say she would review the speed of the tests.  But she also told me the simplest thing would be for me to improve my language skills.  Bleh. 

Monday, February 4

Forward/Backward

Even though I slept quite well last night, swimming practice has been postponed for a few days, which meant Zan delivered me back to my box to sit around again.  On the up side, a few more of my interface functions were abruptly restored in the middle of stepping practice.  No entertainment, but the minor environmental things like the names over people's heads.  Still, dull day, especially since interface classes are trying to teach me subtraction now.  I wish I could pick and choose what the lessons are. 

Kanza

That was an infinitely better afternoon than I was expecting.  I'd only been back in my box a little while when there was a text popup in my head which is the equivalent of someone outside my room, knocking.  Rare consideration, let me tell you, for a visitor to not just open the door.

It was Lohn and Mara, come to kidnap me for lunch.  While this was probably their own version of 'not overlooking the psychological aspects', I had a huge amount of trouble not bubbling over with glee and going completely hyper.  Not only did I get to spend some time with the nicest people on this stupid island, but they even planned on taking me outside KOTIS grounds.

The island that the Setari use as a base is called Konna, and is about 20% military facilities and 80% supporting city.  The city's called Konna, too, and was here before KOTIS was established.  It was really nice to get out to see atriums and shops, and people not wearing uniforms, and there were plants and advertising and snatches of music and scents of cooking food and everything that the Setari base is not.  They even do fake skies, and internal parks and while it can't entirely escape Huge Shopping Mall Syndrome, it was such a nice change.

We went to an 'outdoor' plaza, with cafés (no coffee
or
hot chocolate!) arranged around a plant-filled square where kids were running about and someone was busking.  Actually busking.  Being stuck with the Setari had me convinced that this was such a totally controlled society, though my time with Nenna should have taught me otherwise.  I'm guessing there's little chance that they'll let me live out here.

The place we went to eat was called "Mimm" and Lohn sat me in the corner of a big booth and then he and Mara sat either side of me with a careful gap so that we didn't touch.  They bracketed me as we travelled through the city too, making sure people didn't bump me.  I thought that pretty funny, since it's the Setari touching me which is the problem.  Most ordinary people wouldn't have nearly enough talent to hurt me.  The food was near enough to fondue as to make no difference (though I've no idea what they make the cheese from, and really would prefer not to find out), which seemed hugely out of place on an alien planet, but very yummy!  The rest of First Squad showed up just as it was arriving, and I was sorry to see that Maze's hand was covered in a blue square of bandage tape, and that Zee was walking with a limp.