## Chapter 402 - Nine Answers

The passage became available at 16:22 on Tuesday, 14 March.

Thomas was at work.

He knew before anything appeared.

The sensation had none of the violence of the early transfers and none of the false-start ambiguity from the previous morning. It was simply there: a quiet tension somewhere behind ordinary attention, like remembering that a door existed in a room he was not currently standing in.

Thomas stopped reading the email on his screen.

He waited.

The sensation remained.

No text appeared. No page materialised on his desk. The university continued around him with complete indifference. Sugiyama was speaking to a student at the other end of the office; someone farther down the corridor pushed a trolley past the open door.

Thomas took out his phone.

`Thomas: I think the passage is available.`

Isha replied four minutes later.

`Isha: Wait for me.`

`Thomas: Yes.`

That was the entire operational discussion.

He returned to the email.

At 16:40, the sensation remained.

At 17:05, it remained.

Thomas left work at his normal time.

The availability followed him home without increasing, demanding attention or offering any suggestion that a thirty-cycle interworld mechanism cared about train schedules.

Isha arrived shortly after seven.

She had already eaten something small at work and was hungry enough that Thomas refused to begin the passage before dinner.

“It has waited this long,” he said.

Isha put her bag down in the genkan. “I was not asking to do it hungry.”

“You were looking at the flexible-room door.”

“I am allowed to look at doors.”

“Recent evidence suggests that can become consequential.”

She took off her coat and handed him the scarf she had somehow managed to trap beneath one sleeve.

“Food.”

They ate rice, grilled mackerel, spinach and miso soup.

Thomas noticed the passage throughout.

It did not feel stronger when he thought about Kelda. It did not react when Isha mentioned the date. It simply remained available.

That helped.

By 19:48, the dishes were washed and the kitchen was clean.

The flexible room had been prepared the evening before: mat, timer, water, phone and the old written emergency threshold. There was still no outgoing page.

Thomas sat on the mat.

Isha sat beside him rather than kneeling over the timer as she once had. The device remained within reach.

“You still feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Anything different from February?”

Thomas closed his eyes briefly.

“No.”

The controlled pull was familiar now, although familiarity across one successful modified opening was a poor basis for confidence.

He opened his eyes again.

“Ready?”

Isha nodded.

Thomas named Kelda and Green Road in the same deliberate way he had used through every receipt. He thought of the correspondence circle, the page offered freely from the other side, and his willingness to accept only what they had chosen to send.

The grey-white interface formed.

It resolved cleanly.

**TRANSFER 2.0 'BEST ELF' EDITION**

Isha read it over his shoulder.

“It is still called that.”

“Apparently dignity was not included in the update.”

The pull began.

Thomas remained conscious.

He felt it in the same broad way as February: several boundaries held at once, more complex than Cleanse and far beyond anything he could have powered himself, yet no longer translating that process into pain or absence.

He could hear Isha breathing beside him.

He could see the timer.

Five seconds.

Ten.

At perhaps twelve, the air above the mat changed.

Cream paper appeared.

There was no flash. One instant the space was empty; the next a single sheet lay flat where an outgoing page would usually have waited.

Thomas exhaled.

The pull released.

The interface changed.

**TRANSFER RECEIVED**

Then:

**30 CYCLES TILL NEXT PASSAGE**

No sent line appeared.

Thomas remained sitting for another several seconds.

Isha looked at him first, not the page.

“Head?”

“Fine.”

“Nausea?”

“No.”

“Vision?”

“Normal.”

He moved both hands, then his shoulders. “Nothing.”

Isha checked the timer.

“Seventeen seconds.”

Thomas looked at it. “That is new.”

“You were conscious for all of it.”

“Yes.”

No part of him wanted to lie down.

The second modified transfer had behaved as the first one had: awareness intact, no headache, no nausea, no weakness, no confused gap afterward.

Isha left the old emergency sheet where it was.

Thomas approved.

Then both of them looked at the page.

It was addressed to them in Kelda's hand.

Thomas recognised that before he picked it up.

He also recognised how densely she had written.

“Full page,” he said.

Isha moved closer.

Thomas read aloud in English, translating the Common naturally rather than word for word.

“Kelda says the invitation reached them.”

Isha's hand closed around his wrist.

He continued.

Kelda had apparently decided that Thomas and Isha's instruction about separate answers was sufficiently important to enforce literally. She had asked each named person separately before allowing the answers to become a group discussion.

Her first paragraph was short.

> You asked for their choices. These are their choices. I did not let anybody improve somebody else's answer before I wrote it down.

Thomas stopped.

“That sounds like her.”

“Yes.”

He read on.

Kelda's own answer came first.

She would come.

She did not need to be first, did not require the whole group to travel together and did not care whether the meeting lasted ten minutes or half a day as long as leaving remained a real choice. She added that if Thomas attempted to apologise for making her travel somewhere impossible, she intended to ignore him.

Thomas glanced at Isha.

“I hadn't planned to.”

“You are thinking about whether you would.”

“I am no longer thinking about it.”

The next name was Mira.

Thomas stopped again before translating.

Isha did not urge him.

Kelda had written only a few lines.

Mira's answer had been yes before Kelda finished repeating the invitation. She wanted Thomas and Isha both. She wanted the same way home available throughout. She did not care who else attended after that.

Kelda had added, in smaller writing:

> Your mother says I have used too much paper explaining the word yes.

Thomas laughed once.

It failed halfway through.

Isha's hand moved from his wrist into his palm.

He looked down at the page until the writing settled again.

“Rowan.”

His father's answer was also yes.

Rowan wanted the return route plainly visible or otherwise immediately available. He did not want Ian altering anyone to make the meeting easier. He wanted no prepared speech and no attempt by Thomas to account for the years between them before they had first sat down.

Thomas swallowed.

Isha leaned against his shoulder.

Mara's answer occupied less space.

“Yes,” Thomas translated. “And apparently she says if I have become more sensible since disappearing, she reserves the right to verify it personally.”

Isha smiled.

“That is dangerous.”

“She has historical evidence.”

Tessa had also said yes.

Thomas's voice slowed again.

Kelda reported that Tessa had asked three questions in immediate succession: whether Thomas and Isha would both really be there, whether touching them would be real, and whether she was allowed to hug them immediately.

Kelda had told her the first two answers belonged to the meeting mechanism and the third belonged to Thomas and Isha.

Tessa's written answer beneath that was:

> Yes. Ask them the third one.

Thomas stopped reading.

Isha turned towards him.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

Her fingers tightened around his.

“Yes,” she agreed.

They sat with Tessa's answer for a while before continuing.

Sereth came next.

Isha straightened.

Kelda's handwriting had not changed, but Thomas found himself reading more carefully anyway.

Sereth would come.

Her condition was not about the room, the door or Ian's power. Those conditions in the invitation were acceptable if they were kept exactly as promised.

She wanted the beginning small.

Thomas read the line twice before translating it.

“Sereth wants the first few minutes with you and me. No larger group. After that, she says other people may come in if everyone still wants them there.”

Isha looked at the page.

Thomas waited.

“She said you too.”

“Yes.”

Isha read the Common herself.

Sereth's own sentence, copied by Kelda, was terse enough to survive translation without much loss.

> I have already lost years. I do not intend to spend the first moments sharing my daughter with a room.

Isha closed her eyes.

Thomas did not say anything.

Her breathing changed once, then steadied.

When she opened her eyes again, they were bright.

“That is very her.”

Thomas nodded.

Isha touched the line with one fingertip but did not quite let her finger meet the paper.

“Continue.”

Ruvan had not said yes.

He had not said no either.

His answer was that he would not be among the first people through an unknown road made by Ian's mechanism. If somebody who independently wanted to go used the meeting place and returned as themselves—with body, memory, belongings and elapsed local time acceptable to them—Kelda was to ask him again.

Thomas read the sentence, then smiled faintly.

“I think that may be the most Ruvan answer possible.”

Isha gave a small wet laugh. “He has improved since asking whether you had properly considered my funeral.”

“That was a fair question at the time.”

“It was still an uncle question.”

Ruvan's caution did not surprise her. He had spent much of Thomas's early relationship with her asking what happened after the romantic answer, after the promise, after the obvious good intention. Ian would not escape the same habit merely by possessing impossible machinery.

Aelira's answer was similar, though not identical.

She was willing to meet them.

She would not use another person as an ordered test of the route. If one or more people who already wished to go made the journey and returned freely, she wanted the invitation repeated to her at the actual door before she crossed. Her final decision would remain hers at that moment.

Kelda had underlined the last sentence once.

Thomas nodded as he read.

“She is not treating advance agreement as consent that cannot be withdrawn.”

“No.”

“And she is not ordering Kelda to prove it.”

“No.”

Isha looked pleased.

The final answer belonged to Lethira.

Thomas got halfway through it and stopped because he was smiling.

“What?”

“She says yes.”

“That part is not surprising.”

“No.”

He continued.

Lethira would come, but objected to the idea that an impossible meeting required everyone to behave solemnly for its full duration. She wanted to see Thomas and Isha. She wanted to know whether Thomas's Earth hair still refused to behave when wet. She wanted to ask Isha several questions Sereth would probably call inappropriate.

Then came Kanno's name.

Thomas read the line aloud.

“‘If Kanno wants to come for some part of it, I want to meet her too. I have been hearing about this woman for long enough.’”

Isha's eyebrows rose.

“What has she been hearing?”

“I don't know.”

“Enough.”

Thomas looked at the page. “Apparently.”

Kelda's last paragraph contained no attempt to turn the answers into a plan.

That was deliberate.

> Those are the answers I have now. I have not chosen a group or a day because that was not the question you asked me. Ruvan is waiting. Aelira will decide again at the door. Sereth wants the beginning small. Lethira has invited Kanno if Kanno wishes. Everyone else above has said yes.
>
> We are well. The station has done nothing new. Nobody has crossed it.
>
> — Kelda

Beneath the signature was a final addition.

> Mira says yes again because she believes I may have failed to make this clear.

Thomas put the page down.

For several seconds the room contained only the quiet electrical sound of the building and Isha's breathing beside him.

The reply had not solved the meeting.

It had made one possible.

That was enough to change the room.

Thomas looked at Mira's answer again.

Isha was still reading Sereth's.

He reached for her hand.

She took it.

“I thought she would say yes,” Isha said eventually.

Thomas knew which woman she meant.

“So did I.”

“That did not make reading it smaller.”

“No.”

Isha rubbed the heel of her free hand beneath one eye.

“Tessa wants to know if she may hug us.”

Thomas looked at that part of the page.

“She may.”

“Yes.”

He glanced at Isha. “Do you want me there for the first minutes with Sereth?”

Isha answered quickly enough that there was no ambiguity.

“Yes.”

Thomas nodded.

She looked at him. “Do you want me there when you first see your family?”

“Yes.”

That settled two things nobody else had asked them to settle.

The rest could wait.

They recorded the transfer first.

**14 March 2028. Receipt only. Fully conscious. Approximately seventeen seconds. No symptoms. 19 outgoing / 18 incoming.**

Thomas added the expected next opening as **around 13 April**, with the same question mark they had learned to place beside every calculated date.

Then Isha photographed the new page for the private archive.

The original went into its sleeve.

They left it out rather than returning it immediately to the locked correspondence storage.

Kanno needed to know.

This was not an automatic right to another correspondence page. The page named her, and Lethira had made a choice involving her.

Thomas sent a message through their ordinary three-person thread.

`Thomas: The reply arrived.`

He considered the next sentence.

`Thomas: They answered the invitation individually. You are named in one answer. Would you like to come over and read this page?`

Kanno replied within a minute.

`Kanno: Yes.`

Then:

`Kanno: Give me twenty minutes.`

Isha looked at the time.

“She is already home.”

“Probably.”

“Twenty minutes from her home?”

“She may be changing.”

Isha considered that, then looked at the page again.

Thomas did not suggest Ian's door.

Neither did Kanno.

Twenty-three minutes later, the intercom sounded.

Kanno arrived in her plum coat, carrying her black work bag and the expression of someone who had spent the journey refusing to speculate unsuccessfully.

Thomas let her in.

“Well?” she asked after taking off her shoes.

Isha was standing several steps back in the hall.

“My mother said yes.”

Kanno's expression changed.

“Oh.”

Isha smiled at the inadequacy of the response.

“Yes.”

Kanno touched her arm briefly on the way into the LDK.

Thomas had left the page on the table, still inside its protective sleeve. Kanno stopped before sitting.

“You are actually letting me read it?”

“You were named,” Thomas said. “And we want you to know the whole answer rather than our summary.”

Kanno sat.

She read the page slowly.

Her Common was nonexistent, so Thomas and Isha had placed a working English translation beside it. Kanno moved between the original shapes she could not read and the translation she could.

She smiled at Mara.

She stopped for longer at Tessa.

Sereth's answer made her look across the table at Isha.

“Good.”

Isha nodded.

Kanno continued.

Ruvan's conditional answer earned immediate approval.

“I like him.”

“You have never met him,” Isha said.

“I like this sentence.”

“That is safer.”

Aelira's answer held her for a moment longer.

Kanno read the part about deciding again at the door twice.

Then she reached Lethira.

Her eyebrows rose.

Thomas waited.

Kanno looked up.

“What exactly has she been hearing about me?”

“We asked the same question.”

“That is not reassuring.”

Isha smiled. “Do you want to meet her?”

Kanno looked down again.

Lethira's invitation was small inside the larger page. *If Kanno wants to come for some part of it.*

No obligation. No use made of Kanno's role as friend. No assumption that because she knew the secret and had spoken with Ian she belonged inside a family reunion.

Kanno thought for a while.

“Yes,” she said.

Thomas waited for the rest.

“I want to meet her. And Kelda. And Aelira, if Aelira later chooses to come.” Kanno looked at Isha. “Probably the others too.”

Isha nodded.

“But not at the beginning.”

“Because of my mother?”

“Because of all of them.” Kanno tapped the translation lightly. “You have not seen these people since you disappeared from their world. Thomas has not seen his family. I do not need to stand three metres away documenting the emotional consequences.”

Thomas smiled. “You would not be required to photograph them.”

“I know. I also don't need to stand there proving how respectfully I am not photographing them.”

Isha considered this.

“Later.”

“Yes.” Kanno looked again at Lethira's line. “Later, I would like to come.”

That answer belonged to her now.

Thomas sat down opposite her.

“We should tell Ian the page arrived.”

Kanno's attention shifted to him.

“Yes.”

Isha reached for her phone but did not unlock it immediately.

The recent conversation about Ian's projected presence had complicated any future meeting in one additional way. The Ian who stood in the neutral place might appear to watch a reunion he could never actually see. The real Ian would receive whatever text the machine supplied about it.

Kanno voiced the problem first.

“Before anyone meets him again, especially your families, they should probably understand the sensory part.”

Thomas nodded. “The invitation went before we knew.”

“Exactly.”

Isha looked at the returned page. “Would it change Sereth's answer?”

“I don't know,” Kanno said. “It might change what she thinks Ian is doing in the room.”

Thomas thought about the earlier privacy problem. “And saying he doesn't see through the projected body doesn't make the meeting private from him. He may receive prose containing more than sight would.”

Kanno's expression tightened. “Yes. That is the ugly half.”

Isha looked between them.

“If he makes the place and then leaves it, would the machine still give him the prose?”

Nobody knew.

Thomas shook his head. “We would have to ask.”

“And whether he needs to remain there for the doors to work,” Kanno added.

Another unanswered question.

The meeting had become possible less than an hour ago. They did not need to solve its architecture before telling the person capable of making the architecture that a reply existed.

Thomas opened the four-person chat.

The last messages were still the good nights and the conversation after Mars. Ian had not replied since.

Thomas typed carefully.

`Thomas: The March correspondence arrived tonight. The invitation was answered.`

He looked at Isha and Kanno.

Neither objected.

`Thomas: We have individual answers and conditions. Several people said yes outright. Two want evidence of someone returning safely before making their final decision, and Sereth wants the beginning of her meeting with us kept small.`

Isha took her own phone.

`Isha: My mother said yes.`

Kanno looked at the screen for a moment before adding:

`Kanno: Lethira has invited me to join for some part if I want. I do, but not for the first family meeting.`

Thomas wrote one final line.

`Thomas: We also need to clarify the sensory/narration issue before anyone crosses. No urgency. Reply when you are available.`

They sent it.

Nothing happened.

No typing indicator appeared.

No projected person materialised beside the dining table.

The chat remained exactly as it had been before the messages went out, except for four new lines.

Kanno put her phone down.

“He may be asleep.”

Thomas nodded. “Or at work.”

“Or ten minutes have passed for him since Sunday,” Isha said.

“Or three days.”

Kanno looked between them. “Or some other answer we cannot use.”

No one attempted to calculate it.

Ian's silence had once been harder to interpret because they had unconsciously placed him inside Earth time whenever he was not speaking. Now they had two explicit examples showing how poor that assumption was. Fourteen Earth days had once been less than a day for him. Fantasy-side days had followed another pattern entirely.

Thomas turned his phone face down.

“He said reply when available. So we wait until he is available.”

Isha looked at him.

“That sounded surprisingly easy for you.”

“I have been practising.”

Kanno reached for her tea.

Thomas had made it while she read the page. It was already beginning to cool.

They returned to the actual meeting.

The first practical problem was grouping.

Thomas's family had all said yes. Kelda had said yes. Sereth had said yes but wanted the beginning small. Lethira had said yes and invited Kanno. Ruvan wanted evidence first. Aelira wanted a fresh choice at the actual threshold after a successful return.

“That suggests at least two visits,” Thomas said.

“Probably more,” Kanno replied.

Isha shook her head. “Do not optimise everyone into the smallest number of journeys.”

Thomas stopped.

“I wasn't—”

“You were beginning.”

He considered his own sentence.

“Yes.”

Kanno hid a smile behind her cup.

Isha leaned over the page.

“My mother wants us first. That can be one meeting or the beginning of one. She did not say everyone else should wait outside while we complete a scheduled amount of emotion.”

“No,” Thomas said.

“My family all want to see both of us,” he added after a moment. “They also didn't say they need to arrive together.”

Kanno pointed at Ruvan's answer. “And this one solves itself only after somebody else has returned. So there is no reason to plan him into the first arrangement.”

“Aelira too,” Isha said.

Thomas nodded.

The temptation to convert nine answers into an itinerary weakened under examination.

They had asked for choices.

They had received choices.

The meeting could be built from them later.

Kanno looked at Sereth's line again.

“Do you know what you're going to say to her?”

Isha looked almost offended.

“No.”

“Good.”

Thomas laughed softly.

Isha turned to him. “Do you know what you will say to your mother?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Kanno nodded. “Then I have contributed.”

The room quieted.

Thomas thought of Mira saying yes before Kelda finished the question.

He thought of Rowan asking for no prepared speech.

He thought of Mara reserving the right to test his supposed maturity and Tessa asking permission to hug him as though permission could somehow be the difficult part after all this.

He had spent nearly a year receiving words from people he loved.

Now there was a possibility of voices.

He did not need to prepare them tonight.

Isha was looking at Sereth's line again.

Kanno noticed and stopped talking.

Eventually Isha said, “I will probably cry.”

Thomas glanced at her.

“Yes.”

“I am informing you.”

“Thank you.”

She looked at Kanno. “You may also know.”

Kanno nodded solemnly. “I will update the risk register.”

Isha laughed.

The laugh broke the pressure cleanly enough that nobody tried to add another joke.

Kanno stayed until a little after ten.

Before leaving, she read Lethira's line one final time.

“I suppose I should learn enough Common to say hello.”

Thomas looked at her. “You currently know approximately three words.”

“I know more than three.”

“Do you?”

Kanno frowned.

Isha supplied the obvious solution. “Ian's mechanism translated speech before.”

“Yes,” Kanno said. “Which is another thing we should not assume works in exactly the way we think.”

Thomas conceded that.

At the genkan, Kanno put on her plum coat.

“Tell me when he replies.”

“We will,” Isha said.

Kanno looked at her. “And I meant what I said. I want to meet them. Later.”

“I know.”

They hugged briefly.

Then Kanno left by the ordinary front door.

Thomas and Isha returned to the LDK.

The page still lay on the table.

They had not prepared an outgoing sheet, so nothing had crossed from Earth that night. The small photograph of their rings remained inside the correspondence box, waiting for some future page whose purpose was not already occupied by a question.

Thomas picked up Kelda's reply.

“Archive?”

Isha looked at it once more.

“Yes.”

They placed the original in its sleeve and updated the index.

**Incoming 18 — 14 March 2028. Invitation responses.**

Thomas locked the box.

The group chat remained silent.

Isha took the ring photograph out before he put the correspondence folder away completely.

Thomas looked at her.

“Tessa asked.”

“Yes.”

She studied their hands in the small print: his brushed band, hers polished beside the dark-green sapphire, skin and tiny scratches made visible because the photograph had finally stopped trying to be formal.

“Next time?”

Thomas nodded.

“Next time.”

Isha returned it to the sleeve.