Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
“It's not locked,” he yelled as he slid the window closed, then turned the vid
screen off. He could weave a pattern to match those squiggles but he didn't have
the slightest idea what they meant.
She had two bottles of beer, the long necks caught in the fingers of one hand.
In the other was the carry bag she'd had in the bar. She kicked the door closed
behind her and dropped the bag on the floor, frowned at the rug next to the bed,
then looked back to him.
“I was told that you're Piltsimic. Not from the Zimmer Empire, but um,
'allowance' made by...” She had the pronunciation of the Zimmer word off by a
pitch or two. “... the Commissioner of Imperial Favor in the Bes'tili Sector,
wherever that is. Your security allowance...” The Hegemony word this time. “...
says you get to go where you want.” The beer went on the desk at the foot of the
bed. She noticed the pine needle basket and picked it up, turning it over and over
in her fingers.
He popped the lid on one bottle with his thumb. “Should you be drinking?”
She shrugged through a blush. “My business.”
So it was. He passed the beer to her, then quickly checked the rug and felt like
asking her to move one foot so he could see it better.
She followed his search with her eyes but didn't mention it. “Security was
impressed but Director a'Vasi says...”
“That it's a Zimmer kind of thing,” he offered and she nodded.
“I didn't mean to pry, but, with things so tight at the dig, I wanted to know
what...”
He coughed to interrupt her ramble. “So what brings you here?”
She sat on the edge of the bed crossways with one leg up. The tiny basket was
still in one hand, being examined by touch alone now. Holding the bottle in front
of her face, she stared as the bubbles rose and broke on the surface. “How much
mathematics do you know?”
“Diddly squat.”
She nodded as though it had only confirmed what she already knew. Or was
used to. Reaching into her pack, she took out the writing pad and tossed it on the
bed. Where he'd drawn the map, she had added a spiral, starting where the
world-altar had been, pulling wide around to the cairns along the cliffs near
Endica - houses covered the spot now - and even wider continuing to the Tooth,
all in a smooth curve.
She didn't look at it, just her beer. “You know that at any one spot at the dig,
there's a reduction in the randomness at the quantum level...”
He nodded.
“Well, it gets fancy from there, if you look at more points, lots more points, but
limit the number of dimensions, or rather, pretend that the dimensions you want
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca