CHAPTER XXVI - The Bridge

The decision did not arrive as sudden impulse.

I had expected, perhaps, that a choice of this magnitude would announce itself with force: a surge of certainty, a dramatic overcoming of fear, some unmistakable internal command that would separate before from after. Nothing like that came. The activation chamber remained steady around me. The ten nodes held their low correspondence. The building maintained standby. H11 remained active. Ksara waited within me without pressing. The sisters remained suspended above and beyond, still protected from everything I had not yet done.

The decision emerged quietly.

As alignment.

Not certainty of outcome. I did not possess that. Not confidence in my own correctness. H11 had taught me to distrust such confidence. Not desire alone, though desire was present: the desire that the sisters might open their eyes, that the line might become relation rather than held possibility, that the long silence of Earth might be answered by more than memory. Desire was not enough. Hope was not enough. Power was not enough.