The Tower assets in the highland geology had been there for fifty-eight days by Day 126, and they were not behaving the way I had expected.
Sera's monitoring was thorough. Transmission frequency: low and stable, nothing that suggested escalation or active coordination. Behavior pattern: stationary, clustered near two of the remaining Zalarus maintenance apertures in the remote highland zone, using the substrate draw as an ambient mana source. Not building anything. Not establishing the kind of infrastructure that a serious colonial operation would require.
What they appeared to be doing, based on Sera's ground-level observation on Day 124: existing in proximity to the apertures. Reading. In one case, literally — Sera had gotten close enough on Day 124 to observe that the individual she'd identified as the southern sector logistics coordinator was sitting twenty meters from an active aperture with what appeared to be research notes.
"That's not colonial logistics," she said, when she reported it.
"No," I said.
"It's fieldwork."
"Yes."
She looked at me. The look communicated that she had been following the implications of the substrate contact thing I'd explained after the Hound incident, and that the implications were producing a conclusion she wasn't entirely comfortable with.
"The substrate contact," she said. "The extended proximity to active apertures. You're saying it changes how people think."
"The anchor conversations changed how I think," I said. "The organism's native temporal scale, the way it processes the planes as surface features of its substrate environment — having extended contact with something that processes reality that way leaves marks." I paused. "Not the same marks in everyone. Depends on existing framework. Tower mages have highly developed mana frameworks. The contact will interact with those frameworks in ways I can't predict precisely."
"But the research notes," she said. "They're not writing colonial logistics. They're writing something else."
"What do you want to do about it," I said.
She thought about this. "Nothing immediate. Watch." She paused. "But I think you should contact them."
"The Tower assets."
"Yes."
I looked at her.
"They came to establish a colonial presence," she said. "They've been sitting next to active apertures for two months taking research notes. Whatever they planned to do when they arrived is not what they're doing now." She met my gaze. "They're isolated from the Tower's official position. The colonial operations are suspended under review. They're not receiving new orders. They're in the field, alone, in contact with an organism that is..." She searched for the word.
"Perspective-altering," I said.
"That," she said. "You said you wanted to play a seventy-year game. Contact them. See where they are."
I sat with this.
Five Tower-affiliated mages in the highland geology, taking research notes in proximity to Zalarus maintenance apertures. Unmonitored by the Tower's colonial division for fifty-eight days. Fifty-eight days was not long enough to fundamentally change someone. But it was long enough to start questions that didn't have institutional answers.
"Give me a communication channel," I said. "I'll write first. Let them decide whether to respond."
Sera built the channel in three days — a substrate-layer relay, using one of the Resonants' established protocols that Elara had included in the intelligence package from Vasir's first message.
I wrote: *You've been in the field for approximately two months. I have access to information about what you're in contact with that would be useful to your research. I'm not making an offer with conditions. I'm making an observation: the research you appear to be conducting would benefit from better data, and I have better data. — the regional advisor on anomalous energy phenomena, eastern sector.*
No conditions. No proposition. An offer of data.
The response came from one of them — not the logistics coordinator, a second individual Sera hadn't been able to fully profile — in forty-eight hours: *We've been wondering when you'd contact us. Yes. Send the data.*