At first, there had been stand-off. Neither Jarts nor humans had known what to make of each other. Attempts at communication with the Jarts had been rebuffed. The first attacks by the Jarts—more like sorties with intent to inflict damage—had come just after his first instability crisis. The seventh chamber had sustained minor damage. In those early times, Korzenowski had worried that damage to a buried projector node could cause disastrous pinches in the Way…

His worries then had been unfounded. But through other means, such a pinch or crimp could be the very technique he would use in a short time—perhaps within twenty-four hours—to begin the Way’s dismantling. The crimp, if properly formed, could be accelerated along the Way’s “length” in superspace, causing it to coil, knot, form fistulas, and eventually disintegrate.

“Coil” and “knot” meant something quite different when applied to such higher dimensions. Korzenowski had worked out what that ripple of destruction would look like from within the Way, and from without.

While the Way intersected an infinite number of points in space and time—and a smaller infinity of points in other universes—each intersection was not in itself eviternal, of infinite duration.

Each gate opened would have a finite existence, no greater than the total duration of the Way’s existence as measured internally; no single gate would be in existence longer than the Way itself. The total number of gates that could be opened in the Way was huge, but not infinite; the Way could not give access to all possible points of intersection.

It would take years, perhaps centuries, for the ripple of destruction within the Way to complete its work. Much of the Way’s length would be accordioned as the crimp passed by, and a number of spontaneous fistulas—interconnections between different segments—would close off long sections, in effect creating closed loops. The fistulas could redouble and make connections between themselves, cutting the looped segments and letting them drift free.

When the crimp had completed its journey along the Way, there would be only a small tail remaining, connected to the “balloon” of the aborted universe mentioned by Mirsky.

All of this, in a way difficult even for him to understand, was reflected in the character of the far-distant segments of the Way as they had been viewed by Ry Oyu before the Sundering. Had Ry Oyu—or Patricia—even suspected such an unlikelihood, they would have seen the effects immediately.

Korzenowski finished receiving the reports and retired to sit in his restored spherical quarters within the bore hole. He closed his eyes, losing himself in contemplation and a deep melancholy that was not entirely unpleasant.

He had nobody, and everybody, to leave behind. No offspring but the Hexamon itself. Having died once already, he certainly did not fear extinction. What he feared was overstepping limits.