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[Kiyevanie]

"Yeah - definitely something else."  Andy cleared his throat; he hadn't spoken that much in what felt like ages.

Ni'ka, noticing the man's dry throat, reached out for a bowl of water standing beside the pallet, handing it towards the mercenary, who took it gratefully.

"Thanks!" he said and drank thirstily, putting the bowl back down again after a moment.  "And you can bet that this place has been affected.  I mean, there are only a few people talking to me; my healers of course do, every time they check my wound."  He smiled.  "Got them all in an uproar when they saw the infection was gone that morning.  Said something about me being 'blessed' too, and that almost made them chatty.  Not that they shared any secrets; they still don't trust me; but somehow it felt as if the distrust was a bit less than before.  And it wasn't just them...  See, when you're stuck in a place where people are wary around you, ya get a feeling if the vibes are changing.  And they've definitely been changing since that night.  People are still worried, and they don't like the idea of that demon in the sky and what it did to the world the least bit more than they ever did.  But it's as if the load on their shoulders just got a little bit less heavy.  Or as if they were given more strength to carry it.  It's hard to put a finger on it..."

He looked around.  "For one - I recognize a place that's getting evacuated if I see one - and this place has a lot less people than it should have.  Especially less old people or kids running around than any settlement usually has.  And still, last morning was the first time I heard some child laugh out there.  And a few of the old people here in what they call a med bay could leave it that morning.  And I think there were a few people singing last night - that was a first, too."  He grinned.  "I think that grim healer...Tiye?  She actually smiled at me the last time I saw her."

[Random the Navigator]

Ash's features went soft at the soldier's account of the change in the atmosphere at Hometree.  Of course she'd have to get with people in the Clan about the particulars; but this first inkling that something had, in fact, gone profoundly right for these people that night lifted her spirits.

"I would imagine," she said.  "All this time, the Na'vi have thought their goddess had left them or been taken from them, who knew how or for how long, and all they could see was their world crumbling in front of their eyes...  This was the first sign they've had that She was still a force in the world and that She hadn't forgotten them...or even forgotten *us*.  You and me and Rick, the aliens among them.  Makes me really wonder what happened that night at the 'Gate..."

Then she chuckled.  "Tiye, 'grim'?  Naww, she's nothing of the kind...unless you happen to be one of those stubborn patients who refuses to sit down, shut up and eat her veggies.  Don't think I haven't felt The Wrath!  But she's extremely competent and has the best interests of her patients and the community at heart.  Where those conflict, she comes down heavily on the side of the patients.  You're not the first object of dread to fetch up here; she pulled out all the stops and called in quite a few markers to get Tsanten--a Changed Na'vi!--admitted to the upstairs ward.  Maybe if you thought of her as a doctor who also happens to be a drill sergeant...?"  She grinned.

[Kiyevanie]

"A doctor that happens to be a drill sergeant?"  Now Andy outright chuckled, wincing as his stomach wound reminded him that he still had some healing to do.  "That's her in a nutshell.  Not that I'd even dream of not doing what she says.  This ain't the first time I've gotten messed up, and I've learned soon enough that the fastest way out of med bay is to do exactly what the doctor orders."  He smirked.  "Thinking about it, I've met one or two of her kind before.  You just don't mess with them, no matter if you're a patient, another doctor, or the big Reaper himself."

Ni'ka couldn't help herself in teasing Ash a bit: "Oh yes, you should know about Tiye's Wrath..."  Then her face grew soft too.  "Bringing in Tsanten, I'll forever be in her debt," she admitted, ignoring the fact that she had played a part in that too.  "And Ash is right about another thing too.  Feeling the touch of Eywa that night, it gave all of us hope.  The People, our Tawtute friends, Ash and Rick...and us Changed ones too.  She still Sees us."

Andy heard the words, knowing that he was probably missing a good part of what lay behind them.  And that was on more than one level.  By now he had learned firsthand how important spiritual issues were for the Na'vi, and that was a field in which he lacked experience; he knew that if he wanted to throw in his lot with them - and he had decided already for that - he'd need a lot of extra tuition on that subject.  The knowledge about the Na'vi shared in the barracks was usually much more of the practical kind.

And the second thing he was sure of was that his two visitors weren't telling him everything.  For example, they'd have to have a base somewhere out there, a place where they could sleep, eat human food...  Not that he blamed Ash and Ni'ka for keeping their mouth shut about it.  If they were ever to trust him, he'd have to work for it.

"Yeah," he finally muttered, "I'd like to know if and how they felt it in the 'Gate too.  Probably more in the miners' and science blokes' quarters than in the barracks."

[Random the Navigator]

Ash barely kept herself from flinching when Ni'ka mentioned "our Tawtute friends".  Up to that point, the only named and known members of their group were herself, Rick and Ni'ka, all of whom Andy had met at the Na'vi dispensary; and Tsanten, who could be mentioned without compromising anything.  Listing these four separately from "our Tawtute friends" was a dead giveaway that there was more to the resistance than one Avatar driver, her boyfriend and a couple of dark Na'vi they'd saved.  How much more?  Surely Andy must be asking himself the same thing, if even Ash had noticed...and she was no tactician.

"Don't be so sure about the scientists," she replied to Andy.  "Or the soldiers, for that matter.  There might or might not be atheists in the trenches, but there certainly are in the BioLab.  I ought to know; before this all started, I was one of them..."  Her voice trailed off as she recalled asking Tangek if she could "study" Tsanten's charred queue-strands before the healer buried them.  The sample of Ni'ka's venom had been most informative and crucial to their understanding of what they were dealing with; but to fail to realise the howling incongruity between biochemical analysis and a burial rite was tunnel vision of the highest order.

"The things I didn't believe before the All-mother passed right through me on Her way out..." she continued at last.  "They didn't cover that in the textbooks.  Not even the ones about the Na'vi.  My colleagues are probably over there right now trying to squeeze the Blessing into their little measurements of physical forces, like the way negative ions make you feel refreshed.  I can tell you one thing almost for sure, though: Nobody who was in their Avatar that night is ever going to be the same.  These bodies are tuned to that sort of thing..."

[Kiyevanie]

Andy frowned a little at Ni'ka's words.  Was she talking about just Rick and Ash there, or were there any others involved?  He wasn't stupid; there had to be more people on their side, and some of them probably even in Hell's Gate.  As far as he knew, nobody besides the two humans he already knew had escaped the base.  But there *had* been other remote groups; after all, at any given time there were several expeditions out there.  But that was another of those things he was sure nobody would tell him about in clear words.  Not now, not in the near future.

So he put his focus back to the things he did have information about.  "I trust your judgement on how it might have affected Avatars, but for the drivers it depends on how many of them might have been linked in," he said.  "Carbonell and his inner circle have their eyes on the drivers - he thinks they're potential rebels, all of them.  He never thought much of them to begin with, but after that stunt with your Avatar?  There's no proof, but he's deeply convinced that you guys had inside help.  So he uses them for heavy work on the base, but apart from that they don't get their noses out of the compound much these days.  And about the science labs and the people working there - you know more about them than me; I didn't have much to do with them."

Ni'ka, not even aware that her careful choice of words could be misread, was disturbed about something else.  "You really think they can't See that it's been the Great Mother's spirit?" she wondered.  "Haven't they learned from the last time?"  Since hearing the story of the sixth Toruk Makto, she knew that humans had had their experiences with Eywa's strength already.

Andy snorted.  "A few of the guys in the barracks might not even have noticed the whole thing - or, if they did, blamed it on the bad booze."  He shook his head.  "This...happening was in the evening, and things can get a bit rowdy in there after hours."  He looked at the two visitors.  "For you and your...um, guess I better say 'our', huh?...case, we can hope that there were enough who noticed and realized where it was coming from, but I don't get my hopes up too high."

[Random the Navigator]

"Can't tell you much about the Avatar compound; I never made it out there," Ash confessed.  "The morning we rescued Sprout--yeah, go ahead and smirk, I gave my Avatar a name--was the first time I'd ever linked in at all.  It was either that or let those goons smash her tank and divvy her up for spare parts...  I'm just starting to understand that the Na'vi consider these bodies our children.  That's not in the manual either; but they exist because of us, they get half their DNA from us, and we get kind of protective of them.  And the experience...  I have it on ironclad authority that our Avatars store up sensations in their sleep and transmit them to us when we link in.  I'm too new at this to have picked up on it personally, but the drivers used to talk about it in the mess hall after-hours.  If something's affected our Avatars, we get the benefit if we know what to feel for.  Kind of like Seeing..."  She was thinking of Enya and Solanda as she said this, and Enya could be described as an 'Avatar driver' nowadays if one defined the term "driver" with sufficient breadth.

To Ni'ka she replied "Humans are the ultimate explainers, the ultimate rationalisers, the ultimate excuse-makers.  If something happens that we don't understand, we make up a story to explain it.  In the old times those stories were myths and legends; now they're scientific theories and hypotheses.  It's the same basic thing, though.  We all had our minds blown by what happened here thirty years ago.  But that was thirty years ago, and we've had a lot of new people and plenty of time to concoct an explanation that we're more comfortable with.  One where we get to be the heroes; one that doesn't make us feel helpless in the face of things like demons and gods."

[Kiyevanie]

"Lady, I've seen people name aircraft, cars and even their rifles, so you giving your blue self a name ain't but one more on the list."  Andy was about to laugh again, then remembered just in time how that had turned out last time and supressed it.  "And I take your word on everything about those Avatars - even if you're gonna tell me they get up at night for secret poker games."  He grinned.  "Just kidding there; but if they somehow give you sitreps once you guys link in...they might have had quite a load of sensations for their drivers that morning."

Ni'ka quickly turned her face away when Andy talked about Avatars getting up at night, so she wouldn't give away anything about Enya - because her tsmuke would have loved to have someone at night to play with.  But that was one kind of information Andy wouldn't get here and now.  She masked the movement as turning to Ash, replying to the Dreamwalker's words.

"Your People's Lorekeepers failed, then," she stated, feeling puzzled and slightly annoyed about that fact at the same time.  "It's a Lorekeeper's task to keep the legends and songs close enough to what happened so that we today can learn from the things the People have done in the times before.  And thirty years isn't that much time."  She looked up into the sky.  "And now we all have to deal with a demon."

[Random the Navigator]

"Which gets back to what we and the shamans were talking about this morning...that I'm not the best person to try to rectify this," Ash said to them both.  "The Na'vi sent Vrrtep packing all on their own the last time this happened.  What can I do that they couldn't?  But it was my and Mey's research that told the legend of Vrrtep and gave the honchos a clue of just how dangerous it was and how to release it.  So I feel...not at fault somehow anymore, but like if I was part of the problem, I need to be part of the solution...  Does that make any sense?"

[Kiyevanie]

"Waitaminute," Andy stuttered.  "That thing has been here before??  And you guys--"  He was looking at Ni'ka now: "--already sent it home once?"  That was the first he'd heard of Vrrtep having ever threatened Eywa and Pandora before now.  "Respect on that!  Maybe we ain't totally screwed up after all."  Then he turned to Ash.  "But there is a difference - I don't think last time that humans were involved in the whole business.  So maybe that's where you and your friend can make a difference."

He suddenly yawned.  "Sorry guys...haven't talked that much since I left the 'Gate," he apologized.

"We've been keeping you up for a good while now," Ni'ka said, remembering that the old Olo'eyktan, too, had only had a certain amount of energy and that the Tawtute warrior had been injured badly.  She smirked.  "Seems that's something we're good at today.  We better let you rest now."

[Random the Navigator]

"Andy," Ash sighed, sounding annoyed, "if humans hadn't been involved in the whole business, we'd still be talking about Vrrtep in the past tense."  She gave the trooper a hard look, then relented.  "But thank you for talking to us.  A few more stories like that and I might even decide we've got a decent chance...  Scratch that: I know we do.  Between what happened to us and what people are telling me here, I think things might finally be starting to turn around...or at least turn a corner, not like there are corners inside a tree big enough to swallow a dozen skyscrapers.  Something to think about if you hear someone's planning to bring the thing down around your head...  C'mon, Ni'ka; let's go."

She arose, wished Andy a pleasant rest and a quick recovery, then made her way out to the Commons again.

[Kiyevanie]

Walking out of Andy's niche, Ni'ka turned around long enough to see the Tawtute man slide down again and close his eyes, his face suddenly looking tired, but still not as pale as it had been the first time she'd seen him.

"He'll make it," she said to Ash as they were walking through the healers' area.  "And then we'll have to decide what to do about him."  She was a bit torn about that.  On the one hand Andy belonged to the people who were responsible for the trouble Pandora was in now, and he wasn't here at Hometree voluntarily like Rick.  On the other hand the man seemed honest when he talked about wanting to help them now and the reasons for it.  But that was a decision they wouldn't have to make right there and then.  What they should decide was where they'd go from here...  Had the Tsahiks already had enough time to make a decision?

Some of that undecidedness must have shown in her face, as suddenly a woman was walking over to Ash and Ni'ka.  When she reached the pair she bowed her head.  "Kaltxi," she said.  "My name is Ru'ni and I'm one of the weavers.  I have seen you coming out of Andy's nook.  That's good; he rarely gets visitors, and even a Tawtute warrior needs someone to talk to."  She gave the two other women an open smile.  "Say - I'm on my way towards the hot springs; I've just brought some new blankets up here that we've been making over the last few days, and my back needs some hot water to loosen up again.  Would you like to come along and join in?"

Ni'ka's face immediately lit up.  She had heard about those hot springs, but never seen them...and since her first day at Hometree, when 'Iheyu had given her that sponge bath, she had a secret crush on warm water on her body.  "I'd like that," she beamed, then turned to Ash.  "What do you think?"

[Random the Navigator]

Ash's tense demeanor had gone back into hiding by the time the weaver met them, and now she smiled.  "I think I promised that one warrior that Enya would be coming here; maybe not a good idea to say that until I've spoken with her parents, hmm?"  She was inwardly pleased that it had come out "spoken with", not "spoken to"; that approach had worked far better in the cabin last night, and she was sure the family had had quite enough of her lecturing...and, come to think of it, maybe she'd had enough of it too.  "But if she's coming, be it sooner or later, we'd better make sure the place is ready for her, don't you think?"  She broke into a wide grin.  Then, to the weaver, she said "Sail on, O Ship of State!" and held out her arm in an unmistakable "Lead the way" gesture for translation.