Chapter Sixteen
Cassidy swept breathlesslyinto Emperor Clajak’s office.She didn’t protest when Degorsk took Jackie from the sling to cuddle her to his chest.The baby gurgled at him, her eyes attempting to focus on her father’s doting face.
The Imperials and the rest of her clan wore far more serious expressions.“Please sit, Dr.Hamilton,” Clajak invited, motioning to the conference area in the corner of the room.
“I doubt I can calm down enough to,” she confessed.She looked around.“My emperors, my empress...I thought the secretary-general had arrived on Kalquor.”
“He has.”Clajak exchanged a glance with Tranis.“We have concerns about giving him sensitive information, which is what you asked us to gather for.”
“He isn’t Dark-ridden?”
“No, but he’s keeping ‘his’ Dark as a sort of...pet.”Clajak fairly spat the word.
Tranis offered her a tight smile.“We don’t think he’s compromised, but he has a great deal of sympathy for the Dark.We believe he’s trying to spiritually mentor it.”
Cassidy was too dumbfounded to respond.
“Mereta continues to be important to our efforts,” Jessica said, shooting Clajak a warning glance.“Other planets and resistance fighters will rally to him when they hear of the events on Jedver.We’re simply being cautious at this point.”
Cassidy nodded her understanding.They were using Mereta as a mere figurehead.
“You said you learned something from your research that could improve our situation?”Egilka prompted.He was fairly dancing in his eagerness to hear good news.
“Not my research.The Other returned.It’s ready to help us.”
Their thunderstruck silence was deafening.It was several seconds before Lidon spoke.“I thought they believed our fight against the All was pointless.”
“No, just unlikely to succeed.They’re able to see every possibility since time is happening all at once for them.”
“I don’t follow,” Bevau scowled.
“Everything we do, every act we undertake, opens endless iterations of the future.The Other can see all of it.Don’t ask me how; I can’t begin to comprehend it,” she warned when several mouths opened.“Because the smallest action can change the future’s trajectory, the possibilities are endless.”
“The butterfly effect,” Jessica said.
“Exactly.The Other proposes to examine the most likely prospect for us to win against the All.They’ll tell us the steps to follow to destroy it.”
“Can it really be so simple?”Clajak asked, his tone cautiously hopeful.
“It isn’t simple in the least,” Egilka replied.“Get one seemingly insignificant detail wrong, and whatever we’re trying to accomplish could easily fail.”
“Someone outside our activities could do something trivial to alter our plans enough to wreck them,” Cassidy added.“If that happens, the Other can advise us on how to try to correct the course, but it could be we fail and have to try another route entirely.”
