Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
“He is. Having the two of them together doesn't simply double the risk...” Her
hand reached for his. “You ran the spins, you know what could happen. I don't
know how else to stop her - or the two of them - if even half of the Lady Cult
legends are true.”
“Not legends now.”
“No, and how many chances left, I wonder? The Altasimic Opening was one,
but before that, Ri-altar with the Overpriest Sarkalt...”
“What?”
She told him of the curtain of Ri light and Sarkalt inside, how Niv had died.
They didn't have that from the flitter Net, only a vague reference. Part of a spin
analysis of what happened in the Holding on Alisim and that it was a reworking of
another event. A woman's name on the spin: En'talac and her Temple Medic's
signature over the Overpriest's House mark. Another reference to the High
Temple judgment, but with a twist: Niv again.
And then, in her memory pull - and Niv yet again - had that been another
reworking, another chance?
“Gennady must have had all the potentials contained in the diamond points
pulled in to shape this one reality, or to exclude other possibilities,” she said,
replacing memory with memory. Another spin, but she didn't pull Net to see it,
and she would not pull a deeper memory of her role in the shaping. Not now
when she was so close to the edge.
“The immediate result was a very few lives changed, nothing more. If the
world-patterns are inundated with overpattern, the reality of what we have, the
structure of it, would fold in the same way the points of the diamond did.”
Cayse nodded. “And what the phoenix has already done in this reality?”
“The same. A few lives only. Think of that on a larger scale - the stresses
would tear apart what we've built, the worlds, the people. We're a fragile bubble
about to burst. I don't want Empire to die like that, I just don't know if any thing
I do will make a difference. Except that we're here, that has to mean something.”
“I'm here. I'm never sure about you. You come and go.”
“I'm here now so pay attention. I think Angansit does have something. The
Lady Cult legends say that he attempted to bind the Lady during the Opening and
paid for it with his life. There's a threat around him besides, and an ancient
animosity. Power sits too comfortably in his lap.”
“A personal threat?”
She nodded. “I told you that I don't trust him. That Archive isn't happy about
any access to overpattern. Especially unrestricted access.”
His hand ran along her arm, barely touching the cloth. Energy fields twisted
but he couldn't see them. “Not unrestricted.”
She smiled. “No, but not under the kinds of control the world-patterns are.
Just flesh. It limits me - it's an uncomfortable union - but that's quite a different
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca