Peer
The house was a home. Walls painted white with solar panel roofing, a deck wrapping around one side. It was a pretty picturesque thing.
The family homestead was unusual—three stories instead of two. Was the other family in the joint-house nice?
But the view from that third story was great. We could see across the fields to the woods and creek. A few more deiyano past that, the town’s skyline could be seen.
The fields were full of stalks, dark green leaves bordered on black on their edges. That meant it was close to harvest time…
Wait…those aren’t…
The whole scene was…not unfamiliar. But also not… mine.
“I’m dreaming,” I murmured.
This wasn’t Earth.
Of course this wasn’t Lakandt either.
“This is Farnata,” I gathered.
I knew that. Not just a bit, but firmly. How?
My legs started moving without warning. The scene shifted, moving inside the ‘joint-house’
Someone tugged on my wrist and, even though I was still disoriented, my body turned around immediately. Too quick…
I was face to face with a much younger Nerin, looking no more than two—which was three or four in Earth years.
Ah, I realized. Not a dream: a memory.
This wasn’t my perspective. It was Nai’s. Which also cleared up why I was experiencing any of this at all.
Neither of us understood the psionic connection I’d built with her mind well enough.
Nerin was looking pathetic, in an endearing sort of way. Nai’s own memory filling in for my lack of nuance in Farnata facial expression.
Nai’s little sister was apprehensive about moving somewhere new. Somewhere almost rural, just on the edge of bustling town and quiet countryside.
I—Nai—turned to pull her inside, not unkindly.
The words being spoken were…just out of reach. I understood the meaning, but not in a way I could translate. I knew what was being said and exchanged, but, for now, the sounds themselves remained unintelligible Speropi.
Nai said something reassuring, even picking Nerin up to carry her through the home.
When Nai glanced behind her, two older Farnata followed behind us. Nai—and therefore I—wasn’t surprised. In fact, she looked at them with the same expression Nerin wore for her.
Meir.
Nak.
Her older siblings.
The homely image of the memory withered. Nothing visible changed, but Nai’s memory of it squeezed her reaction to the memory out of me.
It was heartbreaking to see the two of them alive like this.
There was nothing else to do while Nai’s torturous memory played out. The four siblings poked around the house, the two younger ones romping about before Meir grabbed a tape machine and continued where we’d stopped in the adventures of…someone…the words were indecipherable.
Or maybe Nai didn’t remember any of the specifics.
It was such a strange thing to experience firsthand; an undeniably happy memory that brought on so much pain, my connection with the memory lapsed.
The image of her home slipped away from me as I woke up, and I was left with little more than a hazy realization.
Vorpal fire was the same color as Farnata’s sky.
·····
I woke up sweating with my heart pounding.
For such a bright memory, Nai’s pain was visceral to match. It was enough to illicit a physical reaction in me secondhand. Or…was it firsthand?
“Another one,” I breathed out. No one was here. I was talking to no one.
It wasn’t something I’d recalled in the quasi-aware state of the memory, but this was only the most recent memory of Nai’s I’d sat through.
I’d figured out that the memory wasn’t mine quickly this time, though. Was I getting faster at differentiating her experiences from mine?
This was only the fifth one, so my sample size was pitiful. No conclusions yet.
Still, experiencing alien memories was a huge step past any other psionic interaction I’d done. There was no telling what risks I was exposed to right now.
And while normally that would be cause for concern, there truly was no telling.
Nai and I could be in no danger whatsoever. Or we could go raving mad at the drop of a hat. Or anywhere in between.
With no clearer course of action in the interim, I was going to keep careful notes and proceed with caution. It wasn't like I had any way of knowing how to stop it either.
If glimpsing each other’s memories in dreams was the worst we could expect, then we’d probably be fine. But even the slightest changes could be significant, so I was charting everything.
Ironically, the problem was also the only solution. In thirty seconds I’d made a decent summary of the dream, numerically charted some basic emotional markers, and filed away the whole thing in my psionic cabinet.
I needed to get around to reorganizing that…given the format for most of it, I was thinking of switching away from psionic ‘paper’ and moving to a more digital metaphor. A collapsible computer filing system.
There would be a bit less freedom in what format the stored information took, but consequently I’d be able to store way more.
Not today though.
I’d woken up a bit early, but only by a few minutes, and it was all hands on deck this morning.
We were cleaning the apartment today.
Nai, Nerin, and I were technically not the only occupants, but we’d be the only ones here now. The other three Farnata Adepts that lived in the other three bedrooms were assigned to other Paris moons for the next few months.
Light-sleeper-Nerin was up soon after me, armed with a full arsenal of complaints about how loud and clumsy I was.
She trudged into the kitchen and began tossing food into a small pot she set on the stove.
It was breakfast soup. Literally just any spare vegetables and broth thrown over a flame. It was apparently a staple built from the leftovers from home-day. As good as it smelled, figuring out if I could eat all the vegetables was more trouble than it was worth.
The odds were that I’d be fine, more than ninety percent of common Farnata foods were safe for me, but it only took one to ruin my morning.
Still, I wanted something hot too. I grabbed a carton of black-broth, poured it into a materialized thermos, and added a bead of scorching hot nonreactive metal.
Swirl for ten seconds, dematerialize the metal, and I was left with a warm thermos of savory alien soup of my own.
Learning how to affect the temperature of what I materialized had been tricky, but so worth it.
“Alright,” I spoke between sips of broth, “what’s our plan of attack?”
“We need all troops present first,” Nerin replied.
Hmm. Nerin didn’t usually play along with my banter. She didn’t seem enthusiastic, but I was happy to take it.
“Nai got back even later than I did,” I told her. “She’s still asleep.”
Nerin started toward Nai’s bedroom, intent on waking her up. “She can still help us clean,” she scoffed.
“
She didn’t respond coherently, just a quasi-conscious groan whose effort petered out.
“We said we were all going to clean!” Nerin complained. “You don’t get to just exempt her.”
“I’m volunteering for her share of the work,” I corrected. “Besides, as long as she’s dozing, Toe will stay out from underfoot.” Ever since she’d come back from Yawhere, her verminous little dog-worm hadn’t slept anywhere else.
She glowered, but didn’t barge into Nai’s room.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Adept us some scrubbing pads, ethanoic acid, and some soap.”
“Uhhh…I can do soap,” I said. “Maybe the pads too. I’m not sure I could make something woven. I’m not sure what kind of acid that is though.”
“Are you joking?” she asked. “What kind of idiot doesn’t know the makeup of one of the most common acids out there, but does know how to make soap? That’s a much more complicated molecule.”
“But it’s also a lot less risky for a novice to experiment with. It’s relatively easy to conceptualize the type of molecule you want for soap,” I told her.
“And something that weakly dissociates in water was too complicated?” she mocked.
We reached a solution, literally, when Nerin deigned to dip into the non-Adept stock of cleaning supplies buried under the kitchen sink—it was a little interesting to see aliens storing their cleaning supplies there too. With a bucket of soapy, slightly acidic water Nerin and I got busy scrubbing surfaces.
The work was trivial and honestly enjoyable. It gave me some free time to tinker with more psionics, nearing ever closer to the limits of my memory.
But Nerin was a talkative worker. I shuddered what she might be like in surgery.
Because cleaning was a chore with hidden complexities.
Two weeks with the Organic Authority had taught me a lot of alien bioscience, even if most of it went over my head.
But one afternoon cleaning with the Farnata prodigy junior-surgeon and I learned more about germs than I ever had before.
“Disinfecting is not the same thing as cleaning, you idiot,” she said.
“…And which one are we attempting here?”
“Cleaning!”
“Is disinfecting not the more…I don’t know, comprehensive option?”
“No, disinfecting is just killing germs on a surface,” Nerin said. “And any child can tell you that dead germs are just food for new ones. Cleaning properly is about removing things: dust, oil, particles of food—anything that can promote microbial growth.”
“Aren’t there going to be germs anyway?” I asked.
“Obviously,” she said. “That’s unavoidable. What we want though, is to limit accelerated growth of them. The errant stray million bacteria are fine, but when there’s a feast—whether crumbs or their chemically slain brethren—that number hikes into the trillions and you get colonies well beyond the normal concentration.”
I was having to work a bit to sort through what was hyperbole, but this was sounding familiar.
Every single human being had likely been exposed to anthrax, or some similarly lethal disease. But if you only caught one or two spores, bacterium, or viruses, then your immune system would catch it. Even hundreds and thousands of instances of infection were basically nothing. That number went up and down depending on the disease, but the principle was simple. The bigger number of germs you took in, the more likely it was you fell ill. The reverse was also true.
The doctors at the Organic Authority had spelled it out, infections were a numbers game on a bell curve. You didn’t have serious exposure until the number of intruders exceeded your body’s initial defenses. Just like poisons, even infections weren’t inherently harmful. There was a minimum requisite dose.
“Load,” I recalled. “You’re talking about microbial load in an environment.”
“If you know what it is, then why are you asking?!” she screeched.
“Give me a break,” I complained. “I’m speaking in a language I didn’t know last year. Call me new at this.”
“You’re an embarrassment,” she muttered.
I grinned.
“True,” I said.
Agreeing with Nerin upset her too, more than everything else I’d said today.
I was beginning to see the similar streaks in the Cal-Yan-Ti sisters. They were both high strung, highly driven, and harsh on themselves.
By contrast, I was someone who went out of my way to make sure I wasn’t going too hard on myself. Of course, I had to go so far out of my way, because I had the same impulse they did. It wasn’t easy, but I was learning to temper it more and more.
The more I stewed on it, Nerin might be mortified that Nai was letting me take her share of chores. In fact, six months ago, Nai might have been mortified at the prospect too.
Could that be a Farnata trait or just something that ran in the family?
Nai did eventually get up, announced by an excited Toe wriggling out of her room.
“Next time, wake me up,” she complained.
“No,” I said, blatantly unapologetic.
She glared, but I wasn’t fazed.
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Nerin and I were mostly done cleaning, and even if it was Nai’s first day off in a while, Nerin still had evening shifts at the hospital. The look on her face said she had more to say, but she must not have felt confrontational today.
She departed for her afternoon shift a few minutes later.
Nai cradled Toe in one arm while she ate a breakfast I didn’t recognize.
“You don’t usually want to chat—” I pointed between my forehead and hers, “—this way.”
she said.
I said.
It wasn’t the first time Nai had a dream from my memories either.
Nai complained.
The expression on Nai’s face reflected pure torture and a truly fond memory both. How could I not recognize it? I’d experienced it from her own perspective.
<[Saga,]> I suggested.
<…Any changes?> I asked.
<…Got it.>
Nai looked at me curiously, idly scratching Toe’s head. Her eyes narrowed humorously, but it wasn’t reassuring.
Something bumped against the side of my neck, and I jumped up in surprise.
A carefully crafted spike was growing from the wall and floor, coming to an entirely silent stop just a hair’s breadth from my neck.
·····
Nai might have wanted to play coy about ‘Tiv’, but the day did its best to distract her.
Today’s bodyguards, Leen and Fenno, awaited me outside our building. Normally when I left to go anywhere, they fell in silently. But with Nai in tow, they broke their silence.
“It’s an honor, Asu,” Leen said. Her hand even twitched to start a salute, but Nai was technically off duty.
“Wrong rank,” I told her.
Both Casti women were surprised at that.
“I was demoted on Yawhere,” Nai explained. “I threw him through a wall.”
I grinned, letting the two Casti extrapolate from that on their own.
“What rank are you now, anyway?” I asked.
“Unclear,” Nai said. “Ase Serral demoted me, but it was technically a field demotion so it’s subject to review…I’m somewhere higher than Raho and lower than Asu. I think half the reason Laranta has kept me so busy is to justify a promotion, because, technically, I don’t think my clearance matches my rank.”
“Sounds complicated,” I said.
"You wouldn't even believe some of the deployment exercises I've had to oversee the last few weeks..."
Nai was a good friend to have, in large part because she was as fascinated by psionics as I was. While we had one conversation about her military rank out loud, there was a second psionic exchange happening that didn’t derail the first.
Nerin didn’t strike me as someone who would lash out just for a reaction. She didn’t seem that insecure: she had the self-assuredness to cut open two different flavors of alien and stitch them back up.
Ah, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t also still be insecure.
Nai nodded absently.
A psionic history lesson and a vocal conversation about military decorum carried us to the tram station, but Nai pointed us toward a different line than the one I usually took to the school and hospital.
It was technically the middle of a weekday for the Casti on base, so Fenno and Leen had an easy time watching out for me. Thankfully, they had never cleared a tramcar outright, but on one particularly crowded morning my chaperones had decided to wait for a car with fewer bodies packed together. The Farnata in my building might be getting used to the sight of me, but in the rest of High Harbor I was still a strange sight that turned heads.
Nai and I rode the tram while Leen and Fenno took up positions on either side of us. They’d picked a good car, with just a few people shooting the odd glance at us. The three Coalition soldiers riding with me were visibly at ease though. Casti in the tram saw that and relaxed a bit themselves.
No one was going to stir up a panic just from seeing me. Probably. The overwhelming odds were that no danger would come near me, but they were here, just in case.
A psionic flicker caught my attention.
Seven out of eight days, the bodyguards were overkill, but every so often that eight day rolled around.
A familiar Casti had just boarded the tram. One of the few minds who I’d bothered to learn how to recognize, even without my radar.
Shinshay was a stalker of mine.
A harmless one, but no less determined.
“The kid’s back,” I alerted my entourage.
To my surprise, they took me at my word and immediately turned to surveil the tramcar’s entrances.
“How do you know?” one chaperone—Fenno—asked.
“It’s the [sweetness],” I quoted, largely for my own humor.
Fenno frowned, but Nai gave a small nod to her fellow soldier. “Caleb’s got some Adept tricks that are technically being kept classified for now. His information is good though.”
Leen—the other bodyguard for today—positioned herself at the tramcar’s entrance.
“That seems like a tactical mistake,” I said. “Why only have one of you cover the door?”
“Protocol,” Fenno and Nai both said. The Casti continued, “At least one gun stays by the principal.”
“Isn’t a gun way bigger than either of you doing that anyway?” I asked, gesturing to Nai.
“She’s off duty,” Fenno replied.
“Well—” I started, but that was when Shinshay tried to slip into our tramcar.
Leen was swift. As soon as the door slid even partially open, she reached through, grabbing Shinshay’s arm, pulling them through, and pinning them to the wall.
The handful of other passengers in the car gave a start at the outburst, but Fenno was ready to calm them down.
“Come on!” Shinshay complained. “We’re in public! I’m not trespassing.”
“Were the first two warnings unclear?” Leen asked. “If you want something from the alien, run it by Ase Serralinitus first.” The Casti soldier twisted Shinshay’s arm, pointing them toward the tram doors.
“I just want to talk!” Shinshay said.
“Serralinitus,” Leen countered.
“One conversation!” Shinshay whined. “I’m a nuisance, not a threat! One conversation and if you want, I will never bother you again.”
Oh boy I was going to regret this.
“…Oh fine,” I said.
The tram gave a chime warning the doors were about to close.
“It’s not really your call, Caleb,” Fenno said.
But Leen had hesitated to push Shinshay just long enough. The doors shut and the tram lurched underway again.
“The next stop is in…about two minutes,” I said, beckoning Leen to let Shinshay sit down. “You have that long.”
Shinshay grinned, taking a deep breath.
Yeah, they’d definitely rehearsed this.
“I heard a rumor about technology the new alien had on their—your—person. Some of the infantry who made it back from Archo talked about a high-resolution camera the alien could fit in their pocket, and a supercomputer about the same size. It seemed pretty far-fetched, but hearing about it got me thinking. Maybe that rumor isn’t true. But maybe it is, and the reason it’s not spreading too much is because it sounds far-fetched. So, I think the rumor is true, but no one believes it’s true on account of how unfeasible its contents seem at first glance. But if—"
I held up a hand, cutting them off.
“Shinshay, I’m going to do you a favor and remind you that you have a very limited amount of time for your pitch. Give me the abridged version.”
They faltered, clearly unprepared to go off book.
“In as few sentences as possible,” I said, “what do you want?”
“I…I want to study whatever technology from your home you have.”
“You and everyone else,” I said. “Why should I let you do it?”
“Because my odds are better,” Shinshay said, falling back into a prepared response. They’d expected that one.
“Why’s that?”
“I’m smarter than anyone else you might give it to,” Shinshay said.
“…That’s an odd qualification, who do you think I might give it to?”
“Doesn’t really matter,” they said. “You’re not going to give it to anyone who wouldn’t know anything about electronics. And you won’t give it to a civilian computer business. Maybe if you shared with the Coalition they’d find some experts to contract with, but in that case they’d probably wind up just contracting me, or an inferior equivalent. But the truth is you’re more likely to find an Adept for help. That’s a mistake.”
“…Because the whole exciting prospect of Earth’s technology is because it’s explicitly not Adept,” I gathered.
A grin split Shinshay’s face. “Exactly! No matter what anyone else does, Adept breakthroughs will happen regardless. So in order to most comprehensively analyze new technology, the most qualified non -Adepts should analyze it first.”
“You still haven’t answered why you, though,” I said, pulling out my phone to tantalize them. “Why shouldn’t I let computer science engineers from the Coalition or the university have the first crack?”
“Because they think they’ve reached the limits of hardware: computer engineering is too focused on software because they think it’s the only place left to improve, but your device is going to prove otherwise! If I can get one—no, two hours a day to—to…what are you doing?”
I thumbed the screen, bringing up my camera, and snapped a picture of Shinshay’s confused face. I turned the screen to show them the image, and the Casti gaped.
Their brain was moving a thousand miles an hour.
“How small—what kind of control interface—?” they couldn’t get their mouth around their own questions fast enough, but my ruse had worked.
The tram doors dinged as we halted at the next stop.
“Time’s up. Shinshay, you’ve certainly given me plenty to think about,” I said. “But the chaperones are correct. I’m interested in discussing this more, but you really need to talk to Ase Serralinitus.”
“Wait, but the timing of our—”
I cut them off.
“Shinshay, you said if I heard you out, you’d accept the outcome,” I said. “So, accept the outcome. Talk to Serral.”
Shinshay visibly deflated, but they nodded and reluctantly departed the tram.
I was going to be talking with Shinshay again. That was surprising.
But not today.
Today, Nai had something to show me, and we still had half a dozen more tram stops. There was probably an Adept method of travel that was faster than the trams, but I’d agreed to not ditch my Coalition escort.
Shinshay wasn’t the only Casti engrossed in my phone. The photo I’d taken had caught Leen and Fenno’s attention too. I’d been grabbing a lot of photos already, but if I was thinking about things from a documentation perspective, I might still not be snapping enough.
But before long, our tram delivered us to our destination.
Nai had been vague about where we were headed, so I let myself follow the aliens.
Leen and Fenno escorted the two of us into a plain square concrete building, and my psionic senses started crawling, trying to reach for the radar I didn’t possess right now. I could feel the Adept minds near me.
“Welcome to the High Harbor Combat Training Center,” Nai answered out loud.
“We call it the Mudpit,” Leen added.
The building resembled a gigantic gymnastics center with most of it lying below ground level. We stood on a catwalk-balcony encircling a slew of miniature arenas where Casti and Farnata soldiers performed drills with mock weapons and cover.
It was like a massive sandbox for combat scenarios.
“…Which makes ‘Tiv’ a person, an Adept,” I said, feeling the sheer number of Adepts nearby.
“Did I hear my name?” a voice asked. The tallest Farnata I’d ever seen swaggered over—six whole inches taller than even Nai. He stood out from all the other soldiers bustling through the hallways.
“Always good to see you back, Warlock,” he said, before his eyes fell on me, “so who is this?”