The Wrong Distance

The Wrong Distance

The reserve coupling was still disconnected.

Delrona noticed before she reached the pedestal. “Why is that disconnected?”

The learned man straightened slowly from his gauges wary of her tone. Behind him, the clear crystal hung motionless beneath its metal suspension, catching a thin blue light from the floor. The river sounded through the chamber’s inspection openings. Since the previous experiment, nobody had quite stopped listening to the raw power that echoed through the channels below.

“You ordered the settings preserved,” he said.

“And you have preserved them?”

“Yes.” He replied looking to his fellow scholars for support in the face of intrusive questioning.

“Then reconnect the reserve.”

Rahkhan was unsettled as he stood beside the tower doors. Dirt from the trail up to the tower made his armour seem worn and experienced like when he had completed his training after many weeks in the forests outside of Amazania. Mud sullied the hem of his cloak and caked onto his boots. He had watched the scholars check every joining wire and cable that morning, sometimes twice, while Delrona’s drawings lay beneath weights on the worktable and to which only she was allowed to refer. That was yet another point of contention among the scholars.

The senior scholar glanced towards those drawings and asked for clarification from Delrona.

“The western branch reopened whenever we tried to isolate it. Is it the upper most section that is routed into the 3 regulating crystals? It seems like the switch is thinking for itself and shutting off.”

“Then we now know where to begin as it is not supposed to do that.” Delrona said as she leaned over the papers.

“We know where the installation resisted us and we need to overcome it to allow more power flow.”

Delrona removed her gloves, drawing each finger free with care.

“An apparatus cannot resist you. It can only function incorrectly.”

“The regulating path.....”

“Is preventing the receiving alignment from holding. Correct it.”

Fateese settled at the table and opened a small cloth with a section of seaweed cheese and a dried flat bread. He took a hearty bite and then opened one of his folders. The dry whisper of a piece of paper carried between the river’s deeper sounds and he pulled it out.

Rahkhan looked at one of the junior scholars standing close to him.

“What happens elsewhere when you increase the supply here?”

The man’s hand remained on the reserve lever.

“Less power remains available to the rest of the system.”

“How much less?”

“We have no complete measurement.”

“But the ‘rest of the system’ means everything in Kefar, or the Mosaics or even further or..... What exactly?”

“All charging supplied by Heartwell will take longer by our calculations.”

Delrona laid her gloves beside the drawings.

“For the duration of the adjustment there will be no more interruptions.” She said to the entire chamber.

The scholars did not agree as they could not even see the material Delrona was using to direct them.

She looked at them all like they were insolent but they hadn’t questioned her publicly that might incur the wrath of some of her Guardians.

“Do you, do any of you have a problem with that?”

“I cannot promise that the duration of the increase will be brief or controllable at such a high level and with our rudimentary equipment.”

For a moment, nobody moved. The nearest Guardian shifted his weight, leather creaking beneath his blue cloak.

Delrona pointed to the reserve coupling.

“Proceed.”

* * *

In Mechanum, Anderix had been trying to explain why two lines on a timing sheet ought to meet on a graph that measured the signals that were pulsing quietly in the ring.

His father, Statix, had been explaining why they did not. As he proposed they were from loops of energy within the frame of the ring and they couldn’t meet as they were free to move within the confines of the rings metal and stone walls and they would bounce and move unpredictably if his conclusions were correct.

“The third receiving point is drifting,” the older man said.

“It is being moved.”

“That is speculation. Just because it no longer follows the patterns we have already established doesn’t mean it is being controlled. It is just a new pattern.”

“Yes but it is increasing in increments that are measurable and then pauses in what looks like enough time for someone to observe changes then it starts again.”

Tajan sat beside the bench, winding a narrow length of wire around a contact spindle. Blena stood at the observation rail. She had pushed back her sleeve to keep the cloth from rubbing her wrapped wrist.

“Could either of your graph claims account for that?” she asked.

The ring’s pale interior darkened.

At first, it resembled wet stone seen through deep water. Then an arch took shape. A metal suspension descended from above. Beneath it stood a woman in travelling clothes, one hand raised towards a shining pedestal.

Blena stopped leaning against the rail.

“Anderix.”

He was already beside her.

The image widened. They could see the inspection opening, the worktable and a man seated behind it with papers spread before him.

“That’s ..............Alfadin,” Tajan said.

Anderix’s father joined them.

“You are certain?”

“The second tower.” Blena pointed. “We stood beside that opening. You could hear the river the floor through it.”

A voice crackled through the vibrations in the dark field and filled the room.

“Hold the reserve for now.”

The woman in the image turned towards someone beyond its edge and they couldn’t see who she was addressing.

Tajan looked from the ring to the gauge stand.

One needle detecting energy vibrating within the ring climbed beyond the measured patterns they had documented.

Inside the image, a scholar reached to steady a trembling instrument.

“Our rise came with theirs,” Tajan said. “Did you see?”

The laboratory director came down the steps from the upper gallery, fastening the collar of her coat.

“Can they hear us?”

Anderix pressed the contact.

“Alfadin. This is Mechanum. Can you hear me?”

The woman continued speaking.

“Open the main river supply.”

“Alfadin! Do you hear us? This is the Mechanum Ascendancy”

No one in the chamber turned.

Blena gripped the rail.

“Who is she?”

“A Sylvan Water Mage,” the director said. “The robes and her insignia are distinctive.”

“Kahleen, the man in the image from our first encounter, warned us about a Water Mage,” Tajan said.

Anderix tried the contact again.

The woman raised her hand. Stone pillars lifted from the opening beside the pedestal, rising up to touch the roof of the room, the rumble and a roar of water could be heard.

In Mechanum, the ring gave a low, uneven hum.

The director looked sharply towards the operators.

“Record every change.”

Blena turned to her.

“She has Guardians in there.”

“We can see them.”

“And those are large reserve crystals.”

“We can see those too.”

“She’s doing this now and we can feel it.”

The director’s answer took a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I believe you are right.”

At Alfadin, the scholar bent so close to the gauge that its light whitened his face.

“The receiving interval is holding.”

Delrona smiled.

“There.”

“The return is not though, it seems like it is getting very hot, very quickly.”

His smile did not follow hers.

A tremor passed through the floor.

Rahkhan felt it first in his heels. On the table, a brass weight rolled against Fateese’s folder.

The river’s sound changed.

“Reduce the upper supply,” the senior scholar said.

Delrona interrupted. “No,” she held the switch that had increased the flow of water below and divided water into two steady streams. “Just make an adjustment to the intervals of energy entering the crystals.”

“The interval is steady. The load....”

“Then widen the receiving range.”

A second tremor struck.

One Guardian reached for the doorframe. Somewhere deeper in the mountain, stone made a long scraping sound.

The ring brightened.

Its centre filled with daylight.

Rahkhan saw water flashing across paving stones. A statue rose beyond it: Syterra, overlooking the ocean square in Kefar.

A figure crossed beneath her outstretched arm.

It was Delrona.

The Delrona beside the pedestal lowered her hand a fraction. She was dumbstruck.

In the ring, another Delrona drove a sheet of water across the square in a forceful blast that knocked people over. Fire struck it and burst into steam. Through the whiteness, a Solaryn mage raised a burning crystal.

Stone lifted beneath the water.

A Thalorian Earth Mage stood with both hands extended. Beside him, an Emberwild Rider ducked behind the rising barrier while a Mechanum Mage turned a bright instrument towards the square.

Near the statue, a healer in the colours of the Veirilian Bloomlands knelt beside someone on the ground.

Then Rahkhan saw himself.

He stood between the healer and Delrona. Above him the rider was diving towards Delrona with a weapon of some kind ready to drop.

The Mechanum mage yelled, “Now Drue! Now!”

The Rahkhan in the image appeared to shout, “Kaelen! Watch out!”

Rahkhan stepped away from the doors and closer to the image. He was the only one to move and he did not do so intentionally. He was just trying to verify what his mind was telling him he was seeing.

The figure Rahkhan recognised as himself in the ring raised an arm in defense as Delrona sent cobblestone heated red with energy and propelled by water hurtling into him. An Ironroot Guardian with short red hair activated her shield and stood next to him in time to meet the projectiles.

The image broke into light.

For several breaths, the chamber held only the river’s noise and the unsteady ringing of metal.

Fateese’s pen had stopped above the paper.

“Was,...was that Kefar?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rahkhan said.

The scholar stared at the empty centre.

“The receiving point shifted.”

Delrona looked at Rahkhan.

“Have you been in that square recently?”

“Before we came here.”

“With those people?”

“No.”

“Do you know them?”

He remembered the name Drue from his recent use of the Rider message system but he had enough of his wits about him not to say anything.

“No, I have never met any of these Aethorians.”

Delrona turned to the scholar.

“What have you received?”

“I cannot determine that from an image.”

“Did you see me? Is that what you saw too?”

“Yes.”

“I am standing here, yet I was clearly in another place.”

The scholar swallowed.

“The earlier contact may also have come from an interval displaced from our own.”

Fateese slowly lowered his pen.

“An earlier interval?”

“Or a later one.”

Rahkhan looked towards the pedestal.

“Later one, like.... something that is going to happen?”

The scholar shook his head.

“I don't know.”

Delrona studied the ring with a concentration Rahkhan had not seen in her before.

“Record the exact settings.”

“Ambassador, the mountain.....” The tower was shaking so violently that the stones that connected the walls and joints seemed to shake the grout from between them and spit it out as dust.

“Then disconnect the upper supply while you record them.”

The man hurried to obey.

Fateese began writing again.

“What description shall I enter?”

“Receiving fault. Unverified image.”

Rahkhan looked at her.

“You saw yourself.”

“And you saw yourself. Neither of us has established what it means.”

She leaned towards Fateese.

“The detailed record stays with my papers.”

In Mechanum, the image of Alfadin had blurred during the tremors. It returned with Delrona standing close to her secretary.

Tajan’s pouch had fallen from the bench and crystals, a small volume of casting concentrations and her favourite tea had spilled across the floor.

Nobody picked up any of the shaken items.

“The local receiving assembly is drawing power locally to hold contact,” Statix concluded.

“You heard commander Velta! Disconnect it,” the director of the facility ordered the scientists in the room.

Anderix looked at his father.

“We’ll lose the tower.”

“We may lose more than the tower if we continue accepting an uncontrolled load.”

Blena watched the woman in the ring.

“Can you stop her from here?”

The director glanced at the operators.

No one answered.

“Can you?”

“Not through the connection we have. We have never sent anything before and you were our first ever receipt”

“Then we need to find a way to go there.”

Statix turned.

“You have no authority to enter an occupied installation in another Crestrealm.”

“They didn’t have authority to occupy it,” Blena said.

“You do not know that. What Kefar does in the Mosaics is their business.”

“They’re pulling power from the Heartwell, the mountain is shaking, and nobody in that room can make her stop.”

Tajan stood trying to think clearly through the chaos of the room.

“Kaelen needs to know she’s there.”

The director looked at the three of them, then towards the ring.

“Your last known route to him?”

“Ironroot,” Blena said. “He was north of the Sentinels when I crossed.”

Statix looked at the solid rock floor of the research facility for what seemed like too long in the circumstances then looked up with great resolve. “Then a message goes there first, with instructions to forward it.” Then he folded his arms.

“And our answer to Alfadin?” The facility director asked commander Statix as she watched a scholar in the image wipe his face with his sleeve.

“Send the measurements through the official channels. Prepare copies for the other receiving authorities.”

Blena remained beside the rail.

“And us?”

“I can arrange passage to the Mosaic Isles,” he said. “Equipment, supplies and letters identifying what you have witnessed. I cannot promise those letters will persuade the Guardians at Alfadin.”

“They’ll be persuaded by whatever means necessary ,” Tajan said, “Right Blena?”

Anderix returned to the bench and pulled a clean sheet towards him.

“What are you writing?” Statix asked.

“Blena is alive.”

Blena looked down.

Anderix dipped the pen.

“I think we ought to put that first.”

The ring at Alfadin had gone dark around its edges, but a narrow light remained in the centre.

The scholar wanted to leave it alone.

Delrona wanted to know why it remained.

“You disconnected the supply.”

“The upper supply. The reserve is still coupled.”

“Then the reserve is maintaining a contact.”

“Possibly.”

“With where?”

The man rubbed his eyes.

“That is what we cannot establish.”

Delrona stepped nearer.

The light widened with an enormous crack that hurt the ears of everyone in the chamber and the light focused into white and grey streams with multicoloured shadows.

A young woman stood within the lines and wisps of light, holding papers against her chest.

She wore a plain coat fastened unevenly, as though she had dressed while thinking about something else. Dark hair had escaped its binding. One sleeve bore a scorch mark near the elbow.

Her eyes moved across the chamber.

“Where....”

Her voice ended abruptly.

A boot touched the Alfadin floor.

Rahkhan heard it.

The woman looked down, startled, and reached towards the pedestal.

Then she vanished.

Several papers slipped through the light and scattered across the stone.

One floated along the floor and slid beneath Delrona’s boot which she instinctively pressed down to hold it to the stones.

Fateese stood so quickly that his chair struck the table.

“Was she here?”

Rahkhan stared at the place where the woman had stood.

“I heard her step.”

The senior scholar crouched beside a sheet without touching it.

“Do not move anything.”

Delrona lifted her foot. “I have secured one of the papers and it is not made of light.”

The ring brightened again and the crystals that were used to contain the charge from the water system below and not allow to over power the ring began to glow as if being charged.

The woman reappeared, this time in the same ring that they were looking at but she was looking back from the controls at them. Behind her stood the same inspection opening that was by the table where Fateese was now standing. The same suspended crystal. Yet the apparatus around her was arranged differently, with fittings where Alfadin’s scholars had placed empty stands.

She turned towards someone outside the image to her left.

Her words came broken through the chamber.

“...still drawing...charge......ahd... is reversing....”

She laid her remaining papers down and seized a crystal from a mounting.

Delrona raised her voice. It seemed so real that she was convinced she could talk to the woman.

“Who are you?”

The woman pressed the crystal into another socket.

“Can you hear me?”

The image inside the ring was like a mirror but none of them were in it. The woman reached for a lever.

She pulled the lever down.

Light ran through the apparatus around her and Delrona could see light reflected from the ring on her face.

She imagined that ring in her image had lit up. The woman’s face now effulgent was definitely the one who had just stepped into their tower but then disappeared. She had just been in the tower but somehow was standing in front of the same ring as them in Alfadin tower but at a different time. The woman took off her coat and stepped back up to the controls. Then Delrona heard a voice that was speaking not to them but to the woman. “We know what you are trying to do.” He was addressing the woman through his side of the ring and they could not see him. “Sy please. This project belongs to all of us. Don’t do this.”

The woman spoke back into the ring seemingly directly at Delrona and her companions.

“Shh!” Delrona demanded but it was redundant. No one was making a sound. “She is talking to the voice. Fateese write this down.”

“Your utopian ideals would never have reached fruition and Grespan’s ridiculous rules and systems on yet another planet will end today.” The woman’s eyes were glistening and Rahkhan could see that she was aethorian just like them.

Then the voice from the man yelled to someone in his room. “She’s shutting down the receiver. Get the travelling party in here now. Find Gertina!”

The image flickered and fell into a point of light at its center and the room was darkened.

Rahkhan caught the edge of the worktable as the mountain shook. Fateese’s inkpot tipped, spilling a black line across the records.

The suspended crystal swung.

The woman in the image was gone.

The scholar tore the reserve coupling free.

The ring flashed and its pinpoint centre collapsed into complete darkness.

In the sudden quiet, a loose sheet continued moving across the floor until it caught against Rahkhan’s boot.

He bent and picked it up and was surprised to feel the paper was warm.

The oldest scholar did not reach for the sheet immediately.

He looked at its first line. Then he took off his lenses, wiped them and put them on again.

“What is it?” Delrona asked.

He held out both hands.

Rahkhan passed him the paper.

The man read in silence.

Fateese brought the other sheets from the floor.

“Some appear to be diagrams.”

The scholar laid the first sheet on the clean end of the table.

“Bring the reference case.”

His younger colleague hesitated.

“Which volume?”

“The sealed one.”

The case had travelled up the mountain beneath two layers of oiled cloth. The old man opened it himself. Inside lay a bound collection of copied passages, each held between protective leaves.

He turned carefully, stopped, and placed one of the new sheets beside a page.

His colleague bent over it.

“Oh,” he said.

Delrona waited.

The old scholar touched a mark at the bottom of the loose sheet.

“This sign. And the division of the lines.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“A passage from the Book of Lyt.”

Fateese looked up.

“Syterra’s book?”

The younger scholar had put a hand over his mouth.

“The surviving copy ends here,” he said, pointing. “This ......this continues.”

The old man’s lips moved as he read.

Around the table, the scholars gathered so closely that Rahkhan could no longer see the diagrams. One whispered Syterra’s name. Another bowed his head.

Delrona drew the nearest sheet towards her.

“What does it describe?”

“Alignment,” the old scholar said. “Human direction of crystal power. Amplification through a joined supply.”

“The ring?”

“Perhaps. We must compare the terms.”

“We have already seen matter cross it.”

The younger man looked towards the pedestal.

“She brought these here, just now.”

“Yes,” Delrona said. “And now we shall discover how.”

The old scholar laid a protective leaf over one sheet.

“They must be secured before anything further is attempted. We must study them carefully and reference them to what we already have.”

“They will be secured in my custody.” interrupted Delrona who was in no doubt about ownership.

His hand remained on the paper.

“Ambassador..please. There may be documents from Syterra herself.”

“You came here to recover knowledge of the installation and help me unravel its power. That knowledge has arrived upon your floor. Study it here.”

“The circumstances are most unusual. I am not sure I am able to foc....”

The junior scholar was already scanning the paper...“The passage speaks of a balance among participants.”

“Then we could find out what that balance is and establish the required balance for control of the ring.”

“Aethorians may be part of the regulation itself.”

Delrona looked at the dark ring.

“Can the receiving interval be selected?”

“We do not know.”

“Can it be moved?”

“We saw it move. That does not mean we can direct it.”

“But the possibility exists.”

The old scholar did not answer.

Delrona turned to Fateese.

“No account of the woman leaves this chamber. The pages are to be inventoried and examined here. Rahkhan you will stay here and ensure these men accelerate their discovery.” She looked towards him. “For now you and Fateese will let others know the experiment remains incomplete and unsuccessful.”

Rahkhan was incensed and overwhelmed by what he had just seen and experienced. “Thirty-one people died here. Will there be an account to Aethoria about that?”

The younger scholar stepped back from the group.

Delrona’s expression did not change.

“This is not the time nor the place, bodyguardian.”

“It is the place, the place they were killed in but you are right, they have no time now.”

Fateese closed his folder.

“Rahkhan,” he said quietly.

Rahkhan did not look at him.

“The eleven monks. The twenty Guardians. They were told to surrender their crystals for replacement. Some were bound. Their uniforms were stripped away.”

Delrona stood on the opposite side of the table.

“You have made your concerns known, though I don’t know where you are hearing these fanciful facts.”

“I told you I had seen the bodies.”

“Yes.”

“You accepted the commander’s account. We have your signed testimony of that.”

“I accepted that the site had been secured. That’s all.”

Delrona could sense the danger in Rahkhan’s accusations had pulled out a blue crystal that she was now holding tightly. “The Council sent us here to resolve a crisis.”

“The monks offered their records. The garrison offered access. Your men killed them to remove every authority that could refuse you.”

A Guardian near the door began moving towards the table.

Rahkhan heard his boots.

Delrona glanced at the old scholar, whose hands were now resting flat beside the papers.

“Did you hear me order those deaths?”

“No.”

“Then be careful what you accuse me of.”

“I know what I saw. I know what you were told. You have had time to question the men responsible and nothing has been done.”

“An investigation can follow when the installation is safe.”

“You are making it less safe, what I just witnessed was not science but a headlong dive in hope of deriving a tool for power.”

The Guardian stopped a few paces behind Rahkhan.

Delrona’s voice sharpened.

“You were appointed to protect this expedition.”

“I was appointed by Sylvan Watch. Unon required me to report what I observed.”

Fateese looked up.

“Your correspondence?”

Rahkhan saw the question pass from him to Delrona.

For the first time, she looked directly at the Sylvan bodyguardian.

“What have you sent?”

“The truth.”

“To whom?”

“You can ask Unon when he answers.”

Delrona straightened.

“Remove him.”

The Guardian reached for Rahkhan’s arm.

At the pedestal, a pale light flickered.

The old scholar turned to Delrona as he explained his innocence. “The coupling is disconnected, there must be residual energy..”

Light gathered inside the ring.

Rahkhan pulled his arm free and swept the loose pages from the table.

Fateese caught at one corner. The paper tore from his fingers, cutting one and causing him to wince.

“Stop him!”

Rahkhan backed towards the pedestal, holding the sheets against his chest.

The Guardian drew his weapon and Delrona focused her thoughts on birds falling from the sky, clouds blocking the sun and she raised her crystal laden hand.

The ring’s light touched Rahkhan’s cloak.

Delrona stepped around the table.

“You do not know where that leads.”

Rahkhan looked once into the shining centre.

There was no clear landscape. No road. Nothing he could trust.

Behind Delrona, the old scholar had gone very still.

Rahkhan tightened his grip on the papers. “You will not hide these pages as you hid the deaths of those outside.”

He turned and jumped.

The chamber filled with white light.

The Guardian struck the pedestal with his outstretched sword.

Rahkhan was gone.

“Recover the opening.”

But the senior scholar from Astryx Arcanum stood motionless before the controls. “Ambassador.....”

“Use the same veyl damned interval.”

“It is already set, I can’t reset it.”

“Then restore the reserve.”

“We have just had an uncontrolled transfer, the power crystals we used for reserve are almost exhausted.”

“Recharge them from the flow.”

The junior scholar looked towards the old scholar and shrugged.

Delrona saw.

“You may consult him after you recover my bodyguardian and the pages.”

The reserve coupling closed as the last of its power drained out.

Light flickered as some entered the control pedestal.

The ring showed only a dark, uneven field, no light, no window, no image.

Fateese stood beside the table, rubbing the red mark across his fingers where Rahkhan had ripped the papers from his grip. “Could he still be in the tower?”

The Guardian who had tried to seize Rahkhan examined the empty space behind the ring. He was in a daze as he had never before witnessed the things that presented themselves before him today and was operating on external directions automatically.

“Well he isn’t in this section. I ... I will look around.”

Delrona watched the scholars make another adjustment in vain hope that they could reopen the ring.

The black field started to become transparent as it thinned. “Where did he go?” Whispered the junior scholar.

“I cannot identify a receiving point.” responded the senior scholar in like manner.

“Then find one.” Delrona interrupted, “and stop that infernal whispering. You two are like children sharing a secret at playtime.”

The scholar’s hand stopped above the dial.

“There may be no person there to answer.”

For a moment, Delrona looked as though she would strike him. Then she turned to Fateese.

“The doors remain guarded. No scholar leaves without permission. Every record made in this chamber comes to you.”

“And Rahkhan?”

Her gaze returned to the ring.

“Fell from the cliffs on his ascent to the tower due to intoxication and carelessness.”

Fateese did not write immediately.

“Is that the whole account?”

“It is the account you will issue until we have something more accurate to report.”

“Since we are being creative, do you mind if some of the golden relics from the monastery were found in his possession? I could use a statue in my welcome hall.”

In Mechanum, after a brief period of grey and flecks of white the image had returned along with an increase of power that was not initiated by the Mechanum rig. “Our supply is disconnected,” an operator said. “The field is being sustained from elsewhere.” It was clear long enough for them to see the Sylvan Guardian disappear from view as he jumped towards them in an image that showed Alfadin again. They saw another guardian search for the one who had jumped in as he walked around the ring and out of view.

Blena stood with both hands against the rail.

“Where is he?”

“I think he is looking for the Sylvan Guardian that took the papers.”

“No, I meant the Sylvan. He jumped towards us and into the ring but he is not here. Where did he go?”

Anderix watched the instruments.

“The contact collapsed when he crossed.”

“I saw that. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Do I look like an expert in technology I have yet to encounter?”

Statix approached with the last timing sheet.

“The signal spiked like it did when Blena appeared in our ring and we assumed he might appear here but the transfer did follow a stable receiving interval so transmission is likely but to where is unknown.”

Tajan looked towards the dark ring.

“That voice before the Guardian jumped into the ring....was that Kahleen?” Tajan asked.

“It sounded like him,” Anderix said. “But it would be presumptuous to assume based on auditory information alone. We could not see who was speaking.”

“Someone changed something that Kahleen warned us about.”

“Yes.”

“And the ring stopped.”

Anderix nodded reluctantly.

Blena turned from the rail.

“Did somebody do anything when I came here? Move a dial, adjust something? Maybe somebody needs to do that here for Sylvan Guardian to arrive?”

The director had come to tell them their passage was arranged. She remained at the foot of the steps, holding the sealed travel letters.

“We will send what we observed after your first message,” she said. “Kaelen needs to know about the Guardian.”

“What name?” Tajan asked.

Anderix’s father checked the transcript.

“They called him Rahkhan.”

Blena repeated it under her breath.

The director placed the letters on the bench and wiped her hands as if they were dusty from the paper and the many hands they had been through.

“Your transport leaves at first light.”

Anderix began gathering the drawings. His hands moved carefully, keeping each sheet aligned with the one beneath it.

Blena watched him.

“If someone has to go through, I’ll go.”

His hands stopped.

“No one has established that someone has to or that it is possible. That guardian may not even exist now.”

“I am just saying ‘If’ they do, I can be the one who goes.”

“You arrived here by chance.”

“I arrived here.” She held out her hands and tapped her body.

“You could have arrived anywhere ......or nowhere.”

She glanced towards the place where she had first appeared in the laboratory. She remembered the impact, the pain in her wrist, Tajan’s face bending over her.

“I know.”

Anderix turned fully towards her.

“The ring has shown us our own past. That man disappeared into a contact we could not measure. Your crossing does not tell us what the next one will do.”

“No, I know but I just want to do something.”

For a moment, he seemed uncertain what to say to her agreement.

Blena picked up one of the travel letters.

“I’m not asking you to pretend it’s safe.”

Tajan came to stand beside her.

“What are you asking? Because that ring seems to have scrambled your brains a little.”

“I am not the one in love with a Mech!”

“Ouch.”

“Look, I am saying that when we get there or when we find a ring and need to, you remember I offered.”

Anderix looked down at his drawings.

“We would need a receiving point.”

“Then that can be the next step. To find one.”

“And a way to hold the connection.”

“Let's get all these smart Mechanums to work on that too.”

Thy Quest: Knowledge and Responsibility

Choose two warnings Delrona receives during the experiment. Explain how she responds to each, using details from the chapter. Then explain why Rahkhan takes the recovered pages and whether his decision is justified by what he knows.