The source was quiet on the first day west.
Not absent—present in the sovereign seed's deepest layer the way it had been present since the cliff face, steady and available and not demanding attention. He had stopped waiting for it to fill every silence. It communicated when it had something to communicate.
So did the Architect. So did Neral. He was starting to think quiet was the baseline quality of something that knew what it was doing.
The cliff face fell behind them. The pre-compression bedrock gave way to the highland terrain they had crossed going east, and then to the ancient stage country where the original network ran at depth below the stone. He could feel the ancient stages as they passed—not Dragon Mode, the Source Point integration reading them passively, the way you might notice the temperature of a room without actively checking it.
The original network was doing its work. He was doing his.
