The expedition would be politically risky; they would have to avoid detection by the Nordic Rhus high-frequency towers placed along their southern borders, from Baktra to Magyar Pontos. The independent Rhus-allied republics of the Hunnoi and Uighurs also lay in the path, and both were renowned for fierce and heartless warriors. Intrusions might be regarded as justifying counter-intrusions, or even lead to small border wars. Jamal Atta mentioned these possibilities in passing, as simple comments on Oresias’s plans.

The expedition’s vehicles would be Ioudaian beecraft, large hovering vehicles powered by Syrian jet turbines. Atta fanned out a handful of pictures of these beecraft with their top-mounted long broad spinning blades and forward canopies like bug’s eyes.

“I cannot say how reliable they are,” Atta said in his deep, froggy voice, with his face even longer and darker than usual. “We can get two of them from the palace secret police. They have a range of five hundred parasangs. A parasang is about three hundred Oikoumenē schoene—rope-lengths.” Rhita said she knew military and Persian measures. Jamal Atta lifted an eyebrow, pursed his lips and continued. “Weapons we can get plenty of—black markets flourish in the delta, if we can’t transfer them from the palace armory or the weapon factories at Memphis. The question I need answered is, why are we going? What do we plan to do if we find what we’re looking for?” Both Atta and Oresias had been told some details, but not all, about the unlikely thing for which they would search.

Rhita stared at the plans spread on the game table. “We’ll try to enter the gate,” she said.

“Where will this door take us?”

“Into a place called the Way.” She described it for him, but Atta’s eyes glazed after a few minutes and he raised his hand.

“If we can live there, then others can live there, too. Will they resist us?”

“I don’t know,” Rhita said. “They might welcome us.”

“Who will they be?”

“The people who made the Way. Perhaps.”

Atta shook his head dubiously. “Whatever someone has, they protect from intruders. This all sounds dangerous and badly thought out. I would feel safer with an army in front of me.”

Oresias, sitting to one side, said, “Obviously, an army is out of the question. If this young woman is prepared to go, can an old strategos be less willing?”

Atta held up his spread hands. “You’re damned right I can. But her Imperial Hypsēlotēs commands.” He fixed his weary eyes on Rhita again. “What kind of weapons might they have?”

“Nothing we could defend ourselves against,” Rhita said.

“What does that mean?”

“From what my grandmother told me, they have weapons we might dream of making in a hundred or a thousand years.”

“What are they, gods?” Atta asked with a gloomy edge in his voice.