The road north was longer than any road he had traveled since the work began.
Six weeks.
Not six weeks of correction work in territories — six weeks of travel between home and the destination. The wellspring far enough north that the journey itself was the first phase.
Different from the first departure.
The first departure had been into the unknown — the territories whose wounds he didn't know the shape of, the correction workers he hadn't found, the methodology not yet developed.
This departure was into the known unknown.
He knew what the wellspring was. He knew the opening mechanism. He knew what came after — the non-linear acceleration, the qualitative change in the return, the between-space at the source flowing outward into the territories that had been healing toward readiness.
He knew the shape of the work.
He didn't know what it felt like from inside.
That was the unknown.
The knowing what came after without knowing what it felt like to be in it.
