It was a long afternoon. No disasters, but between them they had a lot of talents and they examined them all carefully, finding occasional strange distortions, and drawing two tentative conclusions. If they try to use a talent on me when I’m enhancing them it will be distorted in some way, though they can use their talents on me so long as they’re not enhanced by me. And the same if they try to use an Illusion talent while I’m enhancing them. They think that my supposed ability to make illusions somehow interferes with any projections they try while they’re enhanced. I’ve yet to be able to produce anything like an illusion and though Alay tried to talk me through different methods people use, I still didn’t get anywhere.
Although they were cheerful and upbeat, First stayed relatively formal and correct and I took my cue from the way they were using their surnames and was careful to remember that they were on duty and were probably recording everything to put in reports, or being watched by who knows how many people.
But when Zee, who had to go to medical to have her leg checked, was escorting me back to my box I took a chance to ask a few questions.
"Twelfth Squad, what mean do First assignment? Pick which Ionoth kill?"
"We’re assigned particular sections of the Ena to patrol, and clear them of potential threats before they have a chance to find a way into real space. Twelfth Squad will be clearing the sections we would have been working."
Something about the way she said it made me ask: "That not good thing?"
She grimaced. "Twelfth is the newest of the squads, and have little practical experience in the more complex situations you can encounter in the Ena. Our assignment will be an extreme test for them."
Hard to say whether Zan would be pleased about that or not. "Why rest Setari so different First Squad?"
"Different?" Zee asked, but I’d bet she knew what I meant.
"Too serious. Competitive. Less…human."
She thought about it a long time before answering. "The senior Setari started the program later and early on lived with our families, attending KOTIS like it was a school. When we began to show positive results, the program was intensified, the talented living onsite and allowed few visits with their families. The younger Setari started earlier and were pushed harder and further and so are stronger than us. And we will need that strength. But they were given little chance to be children, and like us they’re burdened by the magnitude of the task. Without the Setari program, Tare would be a world of street battles and lurking death." She opened the door to my box, and gave me an unhappy shrug. "The younger Setari, don’t misunderstand them. They are weapons. But they are not so different from you."
I thought about this for a long time after Zee left. Mainly about how much harder and further they’d be willing to push me. But also about growing up knowing you stood between your family and monsters.
Wednesday, February 6
Outfitting
All my morning appointments with Zan have changed to morning appointments with Mara. For me last week revolved entirely around seeing Zan, and now for all I know I’ll never work with her again, and I really can’t see her showing up unexpectedly and taking me to eat fondue. The problem fidgeted around my head half the morning, and eventually I composed a little thank you note, doing my best to make it grammatically correct and everything – though I think that made it worse – and emailed it to her. She treated me as an assignment, but she never called me it. And I really enjoyed looking at her apartment, which is something she didn’t have to show me and something I bet she’s pretty private about.
Mara is far more of a taskmaster with my dodging training. I suppose they’ve decided I’m healthy enough to step it up a little. She started with stretches and steps and all that stuff, but then she brought out a basket of balls and said I had to dodge them and threw them at me, one after another, harder and faster each time. Not at all martial arts-like, but effective at making me want to dodge.
And also very glad to stop, which we did when Lohn showed up to take us to lunch. I get the distinct impression that Lohn and Mara are a couple, for all they don’t hang all over each other. Hell, for all I know they could be married. Even in the same canteen, it’s very different eating lunch with Lohn and Mara – particularly Lohn. He talks non-stop and makes big gestures with his hands, sprawls back taking up two chairs, and chats with every person who passes by. He’s the anti-Zan. All the Setari he talks to unbends to him at least a little. One of the people from Second Squad, a woman named Jeh Omai, joined us. Second Squad is the other senior Setari squad, and Jeh is calm and relaxed and treats Lohn as if he’s an overlarge but endearing great dane puppy.
With me she was straightforwardly curious, and asked me quite a few questions about what it was like to live on Muina. She’s actually the first person to ask me anything about that since Nenna’s friends, so I told her about trying to make a blanket, and that one of the first things I did when I briefly had the wide-ranging interface access was to look up how to make soap (basically oil and ashes, which I don’t see how it can turn into soap, but whatever). Mara said that very few of the Setari had even been to Muina, that it was considered so dangerous that even the squads who were cleared for an investigative mission there weren’t allowed to stay for more than a few hours, and that I was amazingly lucky to have survived. Lohn said First Squad had won itself a good luck charm, and I told him that Devlin actually meant unlucky. I think he thought I was joking.
After lunch, Mara took me off to teach me about clothes. We went down to what I think must be a commissary, and I was given a light, stretchy black harness – a triangle at the back with two straps you slip your arms into and another which went around my ribs and joined like toffee when I held the ends together. Mara had me strip to my underwear in a cubicle and put on the harness and then assume the position – the thinking about doing a star jump pose for spray-on swimsuits. This time I ended up in a Setari uniform.
There’s a mirrored wall in the cubicles, and I spent a long time staring at myself. Barely recognisable as the girl who walked home from her exams and missed her path. My skin had tanned on Muina, since I was outside so much, but that’s faded a lot and other than a few acne scars and tiny freckles it’s looking pretty good. I seem to have developed a jaw line, which wearing a tight throat-hugging collar certainly emphasised, but my figure isn’t nearly up to Setari standards. I look like a gawky crow. My hair has gone blonder than I expected, with only the lower layers brown – again that’s from being out in the sun so much – and it’s grown a couple of inches. I’ve been wearing it in a loose braid most of the time to keep it out of the way. I haven’t suddenly become beautiful or anything – my mouth is still too wide and I’ve always thought my nose a bit too long – but I was looking better than I expected and not really me at all.
I feel like the longer I’m here, the less chance I’ll have of going back, and that putting on this uniform somehow made it nearly impossible. Like I’ve visited Faerie and stupidly eaten the food.
Mara asked if I’d fallen asleep, so I came out, and something about the way she looked at me made me feel I was right about the Faerie food. No-one’s ever asked me to join KOTIS or offered any kind of choice at all. They did rescue me from Muina before I was eaten, though. And they’re fighting against monsters and I can help with that, in possibly the most passive way imaginable, but still apparently I might be useful. Just because I’ve never said yes, or been given the chance to say no, doesn’t mean I haven’t agreed to anything.