Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
to spend years doing what had been condensed into days. He wished Eunni had
stayed with him in his quarters in the Library Center. A selfish wish, he knew. She
needed the others as he needed the books around him and his old skills being
used.
Lunch was muffins and tea in the Temple Library commons. They were several
steps up a tiered arrangement above the larger public common that fronted the
three interdependent services that the Temple offered openly: Library, Archives
and Law.
Two pots of tea, his and hers, were small squat affairs with puffy domes over
them rather than proper warming cloths. The ti'Linn server spoke Xintan from a
Net link, but used the polite phrases in an apparent random fashion while
enacting a one-sided version of a tea ceremony.
Eunni waited until it was through then signed thanks coupled with dismissal
that had the ti'Linn retreat to the start of the tiny private balcony. Her chatter
from the walk here had changed to an absorbed silence that he was reluctant to
intrude upon. She warmed her hands more than drank the tea, content to roll the
tall narrow bowl between her palms with only the occasional sip.
“What are the books?” she asked after a while.
He passed the leather one to her. She opened the cover, balancing the large
volume against the side of the table, the sharp edge of the wood pressing into the
padded surface. Old leather, well kept but fragile. The stasis envelope it had been
sent from Archives in was forgotten under the worktable in the Library room he
and Cici had been using. “Pictures,” he said.
She looked at him over the top of the book. “I can see that.”
“The people in the book are all Zimmer. Or proto-Zimmer might be more
accurate. A mother species to what we have now.” He moved the teapots and
muffin plate to one side so she could lay the book flat. “I was trying cross
references for anything I could get on the creation of the Zimmer species - not
that I hoped for much, those particular records wouldn't be here. I thought if I
could find where the division was, or the reason for splitting the line into what is
now Clan and freeborn... I remembered something that Anga had said to me
about the Clan Zimmer, and used a Piltsimic key - based on Bolda's signature by
the way - and crossed with...”
He rubbed his forehead, wishing she wouldn't look at him like that. “Pictures,”
he muttered and she nodded, the look changing to one of indulgence that was
more usual between them.
The cover was tooled from Zimmer skin, he almost added but thought better of
it. The small analysis crystal that had been in the stasis envelope had dealt with
the book as a work of art - the reason the book had been saved and which
entirely ignored the contents - from what was only described as the Primrose
Attribute Nexus. An ancient sign in High Formal, not a word that defined a specific
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca