He found him in the south reading room the following morning during the open window.
Preet was reading. He looked up when Ren entered and his expression did not change.
Ren sat across from him. He looked at Preet and thought about the shape of what he needed to say and decided directness was the most efficient approach because Preet was the kind of person who would find anything else an insult.
"I have a plan," he said. "A specific one. Friday next week. I'm telling you because you told me about the blind spot."
Preet closed the book. He looked at Ren with the attention of someone receiving information they have been waiting to receive for some time. "How specific," he said.
"Exit sequence mapped and rehearsed. Route to Vareth planned by someone who has been planning it for two years." He paused. "Enough supplies. Enough time before the morning check."
Preet absorbed this. "Tessaly," he said.
"Yes."
Preet was quiet for a moment. He looked at the book on the table in the way someone looks at an object they were using to fill time when they have other thoughts. "And you're asking me," he said. Not a question.
"I'm telling you. Whether you come is your calculation to make."
Preet looked at him directly, and through the Gaze his structure was the clearest it had ever been in Ren's assessment — the organized-mind quality, the precision, the resignation-as-completed-decision, all of it present and stable. And something else, which Ren had not fully registered before: Preet was tired. Not physically — existentially. He had been running a calculation for years that produced the same answer every time and was tired of the answer.
"The additional person changes your supply math," Preet said.
"Yes. I've accounted for it."
"The pace is an issue if the route is technical."
"Tessaly assessed that. She believes it's manageable."
Preet looked at the book again. He was quiet for fifteen seconds, which was long even for him.
"I told you about the blind spot," he said, "because I had decided I wasn't going. I had run the calculation and the expected value of attempting escape was lower than the expected value of not attempting it, because attempting it and failing produces a faster completion than not attempting it, and I had decided that not attempting it gave me more time, and more time had value even in this context."
"And now," Ren said.
"And now the calculation has a different input." He paused. "You are not a standard input. I have been assessing your configuration since your synchronization and the assessment produces a result that is outside my models. I don't know what you are. I know that whatever it is, it changes the probability distribution of this attempt in ways I cannot quantify." He looked at Ren steadily. "That unquantifiable element is what I'm deciding about."
Ren waited.
"The unquantifiable is not a comfortable element to include in a calculation," Preet said. "I prefer closed variables." He paused. "But I have had three evenings in the reading room running the calculation with and without it, and the version with it produces a different outcome. Not certain. Different."
"Yes," Ren said.
"Friday," Preet said.
"Friday."
Preet picked up the Remnant mechanics text and opened it again. He began to read. The conversation was over.
Ren sat for a moment and looked at Preet reading and thought about what it meant that someone who had spent years making peace with a specific answer had found a different variable and was willing to include it. He did not know what it meant about Preet. He knew what it meant for the plan.
Three now. He ran the supply calculation with three, the pace calculation with three, the detection probability with three. The numbers were all slightly less favorable than two. But slightly less favorable than improved was still better than original.
He went to his 1000 procedure session. He performed at the calibrated level. Solin was present — which was unusual for a standard session — and he sat at the far end of the room and watched with the quality of someone in the pre-execution phase of something. A plan of his own. Moving toward completion.
The word completion sat in Ren's processing the way it always sat now: with weight, and with the specific quality of a deadline that had a physical reality rather than an abstract one.
Eight days.
He counted them in the procedure room, lying on the table with his left arm in the induction port, looking at the ceiling while the coherence assessment ran its standard cycle. Eight days, and then the delivery window, and then the maintenance conduit, and then the surface, and then three hundred kilometers of terrain that Tessaly knew in her bones and that he knew in theory, which was the gap that mattered, and which he had decided was crossable.
He had decided it was crossable. That was not the same as knowing it was. He was aware of the distinction.
The distinction did not change the plan.