A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon Page A

Quinn said. Mikal James, program chief for the transition.
    Mikal nodded at him and Lamar. “I hoped to meet you at the dock. Running behind, as usual.”
    That didn’t bode well since Quinn was about to be lifted out of the universe in a controlled quantum implosion of which this man was nominally in charge. “Glad to see you. Set to go, then?”
    Mikal hesitated a split second. “Yes.” A terrible smile, meant to be reassuring.
    The issue was interface, crossing, correlations. Mikal headed the team of physicists who’d worked out what they’d do today: how and where Quinn would enter the Entire. Getting home was even more complicated, but getting to was devilishly hard. The universe next door shifted. Connections came and went, and Minerva had damn little by way of maps or orientation to place. In Entire terms, they lacked the correlates , the formula predicting time and space connections between here and there. This was the most closely guarded Tarig secret, akin to the navigational charts of medieval times, those secret maps hoarded by the Portuguese in a desperate and losing gamble to keep Cathay and the new world to themselves.
    So when Mikal had responded, Yes, set to go , he meant, Yes, I have a way in. A way in that would put him in safety relative to the main things that could kill him, such as the storm walls and the River Nigh. Marking these entities were emissions of exotic matter, forming a signature—a loud one, but nothing compared to the bright, which shone like a beacon now that they knew what to search for.
    In front of Quinn, security staff wheeled Lamar onward toward the wing housing the transition module. Here, the press of workers and crew grew thick.
    By way of explanation, Mikal said, “Station’s at capacity for personnel. We’re perfecting the crossover. For objects of scale.”
    Of scale. Material of the sort it would take to sustain a delegation: supplies, equipment, terrain vehicles, replacement parts. They believed in the possibility of making peace with the Tarig. They wanted to believe that eventually, they would be welcome.
    “So you can send objects of scale now?”
    “We’re a long way from perfection.” Mikal glanced over at Quinn. “You’ll be fine. It’s larger-mass objects that give us problems. Ships, for instance. We’re far from that goal.”
    Ships. Damn right they couldn’t send ships. Although, if Minerva—if all the corporations—were content with the Entire as a route to Rose destinations, then he was much more at ease. It was staying and settling that he’d promised to guard against. Promised Su Bei, just one of those who lived in the new land who didn’t trust human actions, but who did trust Quinn to temper those actions.
    What he could do to preserve the Entire, he would. Perhaps the enmity of the Tarig would be enough to restrain human immigration. But both the Rose and the Entire would have to come to terms with each other, and sooner rather than later. Because the correlates existed. Because he thought he knew where.
    Because, this trip, he intended to bring them home.
    Dressed in a paper lab coat, Quinn stood in the control room with Mikal and Lamar. Just as he had asked, no one else was present, much less Minerva bureaucrats.
    The interface module stood out from the main platform some two hundred yards, connected to this sector of the platform by an access tube. Here in the control room Quinn couldn’t see outside, but he remembered the cold chamber with the harness that hung suspended from the ceiling. They’d lift him up, so that he’d be out of contact with the deck. He didn’t ask why that was necessary, didn’t ask for details of the quantum implosion and inflation process of which the nearest analogue was the Big Bang. As alarming as that summary was, Quinn didn’t dwell on it. What bothered him was the entry point. Last time he had landed in a wilderness where he nearly died of his injuries. He accepted that danger. He just didn’t