Bekele never enjoyed working with Dina. She always condescended to him during class sessions. It always felt more about his age than his work. But she always ended her critique somehow angling for a good word in with his mom. “I’m only hard on you because as Captain Chikeke’s son, you need to set a high standard for others to follow,” followed by a wink as if they were in on some conspiracy together.

Which was why he preferred to work with Paki. He always knew where he stood with him. Even now he somewhat missed the constant push and pull of being taught by him.

“Too stable. Further proof of an architect behind its design,” Paki said.

“Do you know the magnitude of what you’re saying?” she asked. “What all you’re implying?”

“I know exactly the implication.”

“But the level of technology required to construct it—” Hondo was a different kind entirely. Not just for being mzungu. On the surface, he and Paki shared a lot of the same qualities. Bossy. Defiant. Convinced of their own rightness, if not outright brilliance. But where Paki was driven by a deep, abiding love of his people—which no one could deny—Hondo was driven by a deep wound within himself. He wore it on his emi, a baseline insecurity whose gravity well he couldn’t ever quite escape. It made him try harder, charge ahead a little faster, question a little deeper. If only to appear to be better than others around him. That was what Bekele found draining about being around him: that he was constantly in a competition where there were no winners.

“And it’s been here for a while,” Dina jumped in, cutting him off. “Why did we never discover it before now?”

“I’ll wait while the two of you compare notes.” Paki stopped walking and waved his hands between them, imitating agoze casting a spell joining them before clasping them behind him again. Patiently waiting, a teacher anxious to check their in-class assignment.

“We weren’t at the right level with our own technology to discover the sophistication in play before now.”

“That’s my best guess,” Paki confirmed. “It’s age, though…”

“Records show that we only became aware of the gate itself at the time of the Mothership Incident.”

“Which we didn’t make public to the full Ijo at the time. That was a time of secrets. The lingering lessons of O.E.… which cost us.”

Bekele’s skin began to itch. Sweat trickled down his back. In some ways, the Cypher was like a living creature. A central vent radiated from the core chamber processing the kheprw crystals. Shielding and coolant conduits ran through the walls, designed to trap heat from the hallways, but within the walls, especially when a system was taxed, the internal temperature often spiked.

“It led to our first forays into wormhole travel,” Hondo said.