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\chapter{Tycho Brahe\#Castor — 2346}}
\markboth{Tycho Brahe\#Castor — 2346}{}

\begin{center}
\emph{Convergence T-minus 1 day, 2 hours, 28 minutes}
\end{center}

\noindent ``This has\ldots wait, don't leave yet, \#Assist,'' Codrin said. ``Is this really an eyes-only message for both True Name \emph{and} Turun Ka?''

Both Sarah and Tycho sat up straighter.

Ey shrugged, saying only, ``It appears Codrin\#Artemis has instructed the Artemisians on how to relay such in turn. I guess ey did a while back, actually, but this is the first time they've taken advantage of it. Or, well\ldots{}'' Ey trailed off.

``Hard to tell how much time has passed up there?'' Codrin\#Castor asked.

``Yeah, haven't the faintest. Anyway, I'm not sure how you want to pass it over. I figured a separate sheet would be easiest and you can decide from there. The news from \#Artemis seems mostly to be about the Odists, so perhaps that's what Turun Ka is getting. True Name has her own message in here.'' Ey nodded over to the skunk, handing her a separate sheet

Both of the Odists, having claimed the other table in order to have their own hushed conversation quickly moved over to rejoin the other three. They all watched as ey frowned, nodded, and skimmed quickly over the letter addressed to em.

Eir frown deepened. ``Thanks. Here, hold on--'' Ey quickly jotted \emph{Message received, passed on, more soon, updates from others?} on a slip of foolscap and handed it to the other Codrin. ``Send this for now, just so we're on the same page at as close to the same time as we can manage.''

``Whatever that means,'' ey said, laughing and pocketing the slip. Ey prodded em in the shoulder and added, ``Dear threatened to beat me up because of you, so thanks for that.''

Codrin\#Castor smirked. ``Well, did it?''

``No, of course not.''

``Just have to pull harder, then.'' Ey sighed and shook eir head. ``Self-deprecating humor aside, tell them I miss them.''

Ey nodded. ``Of course.''

``I'll see them soon enough, I guess. A few weeks, tops, though at this rate, I'm guessing only a matter of days. Tell--''

``Mx.~Bălan,'' True Name said, nodding to the writer. ``Please come with us. We have only a few minutes to sort this out before we start, and if you are correct about Turun Ka receiving similar information, I would like to plan.''

Ey shrugged to Tycho and Sarah and stood to follow the two Odists to True Name's partitioned rest area. Codrin\#Assist stepped from the sim and back to Castor proper.

``What do you suppose that was about?'' Tycho asked, setting up a cone of silence around himself and Sarah.

``Best guess? More about how they're struggling with the time skew over there. Maybe something specific happened, and that's why everybody's gotten messages all at once.''

He nodded, sighed, and rubbed over his face with a hand. For as little as was actually happening, he was incredibly tired. Conferences were always like this, felt like.

``Well, neither of us got anything, and it's not worth speculating, especially since I figure we will learn soon enough,'' she said. ``I'll start to sound like a broken record before long, but how are you feeling about how things are going?''

``Uh, well, much the same, I guess. I'm pretty sure they're real, now,'' he said, laughing tiredly. ``It's been interesting seeing what we know that they don't. Far less than what they've been teaching us, though.''

``Oh?''

He smiled lopsidedly. ``True Name cornered me when this whole thing began and quoted some poetry at me that got me in mind of keeping track of all this. Something about how we may sit humbly at each others' feet while the other shares their later sciences.''

``I can never pick apart when she's being blunt or subtle.''

``Well, she followed it up with, `That is a poem about death. Please understand that there is risk here, as well' so, maybe it was a bit of both.''

Sarah laughed. ``Well, okay. I'll grant you that. Sounds like working with her has been kind of an adventure. You've had more experience than I.''

``It hasn't been too bad, all told. She's been nothing but polite, and sometimes even nice. It's hardly been a bad time. I think the biggest block has actually been squaring what I'm experiencing with what I'd assumed about her from the \emph{History}.''

``She didn't exactly come off as kind or polite in there, no.''

``Codrin mentioned something about that, about how they wanted the \emph{History} released but wanted to control how. Ey said that she'd acted as dramatic as she had in order to make the end result seem more sensational than realistic.~`Shaping the narrative,' she called it.''

Sarah laughed. ``Well, I'd certainly call \emph{that} subtle.''

``Right,'' he said, grinning. ``So I guess it's kind of making me reassess how I feel about them.''

``The Odists?''

``Them too, but I was thinking more the \emph{History} and \emph{Mythology}. Like, if they're the product of social engineering to make them sound worse than they are to achieve a goal other than what Codrin, Ioan, and May Then My Name intended, then it's probably worth me actually paying attention to how things\pagebreak~really are. That, and how they're engineering what's going on here.''

``Sure, that makes sense,'' Sarah said, sitting back with her hands folded in her lap. ``I can pick up little bits and pieces of her and Why Ask Questions trying to nudge things this way or that, with mixed results. It's giving me a new appreciation for what Codrin does, honestly. Ey's got maybe the hardest job of us all.''

Tycho nodded. ``I don't envy em that. Ey told me at the beginning that I'd be doing the same in my own way—listening and coming away from this with a more complete picture—and I think I lack the experience ey has, both the training as an amanuensis and from living with an Odist.''

``They're cute together, though. Pulling Dear's tail sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I guess if you've been together for forty years or whatever, you can get away with it.''

He laughed and shook his head. ``Yeah, no way. Never really was my thing, so I have no idea how it all works.''

``What's that?''

``Relationships. Never really got into them, so the banter is cute to watch, but just as over my head as all of the politicking.''

Sarah nodded. ``They're not for everyone, especially here, where you have the problem of perpetuity.''

``Precisely,'' Tycho said. ``I can't imagine being around one person or group of people for forty years and still expect to do so for a hundred more.''

``To be fair, neither can I,'' she said, laughing.

After a suitable pause, he nudged the subject back toward the previous topic. ``Has your opinion of the \emph{History} changed at all?''

``A little, I suppose. A lot of the dramatic interactions felt like just that: drama. It's the type of thing that I'm attuned to, based on my work. The Odists have a flair for that, though, which I guess makes sense, given where they came from.'' She paused, gaze drifting off towards nothing. ``I guess if my opinion has changed, it's been to understand just how deep it all goes. Not the behind the scenes stuff, that's whatever, but their control over themselves. True Name especially. Control like that is often used to cover fear and trauma.''

``It kind of makes me wonder--''

Tycho was cut off from the rest of his sentence by Codrin stepping into his field of view outside the cone and waving. He dropped the silence.

``Sorry, you two. Time to head back.''

``Everything alright? You look\ldots I don't know, like you were just put through the wringer.''

Ey smiled weakly, shaking eir head. ``Not me, no. I'm very tired, though, and I imagine things are only going to get more stressful over the next few hours.''

``Why? What--''

``I'm sorry, Tycho, I really do want to answer your questions, but we just don't have time.''
