Touchstone 1 - Stray

confirm just how embarrassing it was.
    I answered with “Nnngh?”
    There was this long pause, then Zee said: “Caszandra? Are you ill?”
    “Tired,” I said. “Your medics are all sadists.” Since I was speaking in English, that was meaningless to her, but I helpfully added in Taren: “Too much profanity aether.” Using the Taren word for ‘profanity’ – I still don’t know suitable Taren swear words.
    The even longer pause after this gave me an opportunity to fall most of the ways back to sleep, and when she did speak, asking if I thought I needed to go to medical I didn’t respond until she repeated herself. And then with more unhelpful English: “No more fucking tests.” But then I woke up a bit more and managed to stick to Taren to say: “Sorry, tired. Is leaving earlier or something?”
    “No, we were just going to take you over the ship beforehand, but that can keep. I’ll send someone with breakfast for you a zelkasse before we’re due out. Go back to sleep.”
    I seem to have said: “Margle margle,” back at her, and have no idea what I was trying to say. When my alarm went off I didn’t feel much better, but stumbled into the shower and put it on full-force icy, and was trying to do something with my hair when Lohn and Mara showed up with soup and chewy black bread and a hot, sweet milky drink.
    “Nice circles,” Lohn said, flicking my cheek. “There’s pl enty of time to get to the hangar, so don’t feel rushed.”
    “How long flight Muina?”
    “Nearly a kasse, if you take into account all the pre-flight fussing and actually getting to the gate and deep-space, and then we have perhaps another kasse getting from the gate point to your village. Maze was planning to use the time for a briefing, but I suspect he’d rather you slept than listened at this point. He’ll email you an outline.” Lohn grinned, stretching himself out on one of my couches. “I wish I could hear whatever he’s saying to Research.”
    “Three different teams were working with you, two specifically on the aether effect,” Mara said. “It had become something of a competition between them. And since Muina expeditions are considered so dangerous, they appear to have felt they should do as much as they could in case they didn’t have a chance to test you further.”
    At that point I only had a vague impression that I’d somehow been swearing at Zee, and asked: “Has First Squad been Muina before?” while I looked back at whatever I’d been saying to her.
    “Just once. Even though the Setari have a far better chance of survival than any of the previous expeditions, at the same time we’ve been considered too valuable to risk. Knowing about the presence of aether is a major step toward understanding at least a few of our losses.” Mara shook her head. “It’s still a gamble though, and since half the reason we’re going is to observe how the planet reacts to you, it really would help if you were more than barely conscious. There’ll be some revision of how you’re assigned in future to inject some continuity and common sense.”
    “Don’t know why tired,” I said. “Sleep all yesterday, should be too awake now.” But everything seemed a lot of effort, including trying to speak in the wrong language, so I concentrated on eating and then trying to get my hair less tangled. Lohn chattered along blithely, but I can see in retrospect that he was watching me closely.
    We headed down in plenty of time, arriving maybe twenty minutes before the marked boarding time, but I wasn’t the least surprised to see a lot of people already there, if not yet on board. Parts of Third, Fourth and Seventh Squad, for once not all standing apart in their own little groups. The ship was either the same or very similar to the one I’d first seen on Muina, with a big boarding ramp lowered, and a bunch of greensuits fussing about.
    Eeli from Third bounced over as soon as she saw me, ecstatically happy and enthused about the excursion. I really wasn’t equal to dealing with her, the stream of comment and questions washing over me as just noise, and it was only when she paused and Mara said “I’d like to hear that too,” that I had any chance of catching up. She’d been fascinated by what I’d said in the Pillar and wanted to hear the rest of the poem.
    “After mission?” I offered. “Will try work out translation.”
    Eeli mainly wanted to hear it in English, apparently, because she wanted to ‘feel’