Preet had been watching him since age twelve. Ren had known this, and had not known what to do with it, which was unusual enough that he had filed it separately from the standard observations.
Most attention Ren received had a quality he could categorize: scientific interest, managed discomfort, the specific calculation of someone assessing a potential threat, the vacant curiosity of people who found something unusual and had not decided whether to be afraid of it. Preet's attention had none of these qualities. It was the attention of someone thinking. Specifically, of someone thinking about something they had decided required careful thought before acting on.
Three days after the synchronization procedure, Preet sat beside him at dinner.
This had not happened in fourteen months. Not since Davan. The table configuration had stabilized into territories — Ren ate at the end nearest the east wall, alone by mutual and unspoken agreement, with approximately a meter of empty table between him and the nearest subject. Preet's territory was mid-table, neutral, the location of someone who moved between groups without belonging to any. His sitting beside Ren was a decision, not an accident.
Ren looked at his food and waited.
"The observation deck camera has a blind spot," Preet said, without preamble, at a volume calibrated to the ambient noise of the dinner hall. "Northeast corner, when the overhead light is on its maximum cycle. Approximately eight minutes per day."
Ren ate a piece of protein without changing expression. "Why are you telling me this."
"Because you're going to need it," Preet said. He was eating too, the same mechanical efficiency Ren used, both of them performing normality for the cameras that did not have blind spots. "After the synchronization."
Ren considered. "You know what the synchronization means."
"I know what it means for me," Preet said. "I'm Category B viable. Not what you are. They've been clear on that in the way they're clear about things — by not being clear at all, and leaving enough in the information landscape that someone paying attention can construct the shape of it." He paused. "I've been paying attention since I was twelve."
Through the Gaze at low expression, Preet's structure read as it always did — careful, organized, the mind that processed before speaking. But the thing Ren had never fully mapped before was visible now with the Conductor online: Preet was running a calculation. He had been running it for some time. It had a specific endpoint.
"What is the endpoint," Ren said.
Preet looked at him sidelong. "You're faster than you let them see."
"What is the endpoint," Ren said again, without inflection.
Preet set down his fork. He looked at his food. "The program completes in one of two ways for viable subjects," he said. "Field deployment or decommission. For Category B subjects, field deployment means a Compact assignment with full oversight. For a subject of your coherence level —" He stopped. "The oversight model doesn't apply the same way."
"No," Ren agreed.
"Solin's program has been running for eleven years. The first cohort was completely decommissioned. Three from the second cohort reached field deployment. The decommission rate correlates with proximity to the benchmark." Preet finally looked at him directly. "You are the benchmark. You're what the program was designed to produce. And you are not going to be field-deployed in the way that means a Compact assignment with a handler and oversight."
Ren ate another piece of protein. The information was not new in its parts. The arrangement Preet was giving it was new. "You've constructed a model of what happens to me."
"Yes."
"And?"
"And the model produces one viable outcome for me," Preet said. "Which is not being near you when the program concludes."
Ren looked at him. Preet met his eyes without flinching, which was something almost nobody did. Through the Gaze the structural read was clear: this was not a threat, not a manipulation, not the performance of an alliance for instrumental purposes. It was someone who had run a calculation, arrived at a true conclusion, and was delivering it with the precision of someone who respected the recipient.
"The blind spot," Ren said.
"Northeast corner, overhead light maximum cycle. It occurs between 1843 and 1851 on current scheduling." Preet picked up his fork again. "I've used it twice. For information purposes only." He paused. "You would need it for more than that."
The implication sat between them.
"I'm not planning to leave," Ren said. It was a true statement. He had not made plans to leave. The facility was the entire world in all operational ways, and outside it was a concept he had studied extensively and experienced not at all, and the gap between concept and experience was one he had not determined how to bridge.
"I know," Preet said. "I'm not suggesting you do. I'm giving you information. What you do with it is entirely your calculation." He stood, picking up his tray with the precision of someone who does nothing carelessly. "I don't particularly want to die here," he added, very quietly. "But I have run the numbers and I think I am going to. I think knowing that clearly is better than not knowing."
He walked back toward the mid-table. He did not look at Ren again.
Ren sat with his food and the information and the Gaze running quietly over the room — all the structures, all the loads, all the managed weights — and for the first time in some time he found that a piece of data had produced something he could not immediately file.
Not feeling. He was not sure he experienced feeling in the way the word implied. But something with weight. Something that occupied space in his calculations in a way that pure data did not.
He ate the rest of his dinner. He carried his tray to the return station at exactly the standard time. He did not look at the camera in the northeast corner.