Tesh was physically present. Elias checked by throwing a rubber ball at him.
The alien caught it.
"You could have asked," Tesh said.
"The last one was a projection."
"Then you have established a one-hundred-percent failure rate for asking."
Elias liked him immediately. Tesh arrived alone through a legal transit aperture established in the north field. Harcourt arrived with eight armed officers anyway.
"Integration restrictions prohibit me from harming a native except in immediate defence," Tesh explained.
"And if we harm you?" Harcourt asked.
"I may defend myself proportionately."
"What is proportionate?"
"Litigated extensively."
Elias nodded.
"Civilisation."
Tesh's four eyes shifted toward him.
"You appear disappointed."
"I hoped space would contain fewer lawyers."
"It contains more."
"Tragic."
They moved underground.
Tesh stopped at the first ritual chamber. For the first time, the alien's expression changed.
"You constructed this before integration?"
"Twenty-three years before."
"Why?"
"To test ritual geometry."
"Which source tradition?"
"Twenty-one."
Tesh looked again.
"You combined them?"
"Yes."
"Without mana?"
"Obviously."
"That is not obvious."
Elias gestured toward a screen.
"Your turn. Why do our old traditions work at all?"
Tesh walked slowly around the circle.
"Most newly integrated species possess mythologies that accidentally resemble aspects of arcane reality."
"Pattern convergence?"
"Sometimes. Intelligent minds repeatedly invent circles, names, sacrifice, elemental associations. Some similarities require no prior contact."
"But ours?"
Tesh looked at him.
"Too many."
"So someone came here."
"Likely."
"When?"
"Unknown to me."
"That's evasive."
"It is ignorance. Scholars occasionally experience it."
"Unpleasant, isn't it?"
"Very."
Tesh examined the Roman coin from Experiment 18,441.
"Your archive includes accounts of periods when magical phenomena were reportedly stronger?"
"Yes."
"And weaker?"
"Yes."
"Your planet may have experienced residual arcane tides."
Elias's pulse quickened.
"Magic wasn't entirely absent."
"Perhaps functionally absent. Not necessarily metaphysically absent."
"Meaning?"
"A dry riverbed is still shaped by water."
Elias went silent.
Human stories might not be memories of a magical civilisation.
They could be fossils.
Remnants of rare periods when something leaked through.
Enough for an event.
A miracle.
A monster.
A ritual that worked once and then failed for ten generations. Exactly the pattern he had spent his life chasing.
"Why is Earth integrating now?"
Tesh's expression closed.
"Protected information."
"You said academic exchange."
"And I will answer what I am permitted to answer."
"Who decides?"
"The Concordance."
"What is the Concordance?"
"A legal, commercial and infrastructural framework spanning numerous polities and species."
"Government?"
"No."
"Empire?"
"No."
"Organisation?"
"Insufficient."
Elias frowned.
"Who enforces the Accord?"
"Multiple parties. Automated mechanisms. Treaty signatories. Arbitration bodies."
"And if a powerful civilisation ignores it?"
Tesh looked at him for a long moment.
"Then other powerful civilisations acquire legal justification to intervene."
Elias understood.
Balance of power.
The Accord worked because violating it threatened everyone else's interests.
Not morality.
Competition.
Much more reliable.
"Can external powers arm human factions?"
"Within developmental limits."
"Can they teach magic?"
"Yes."
"Can they pay humans to attack other humans?"
"That depends on contractual purpose and classification."
"So yes."
"Frequently."
"Can they hire humans to attack me?"
Tesh's silence answered.
Harcourt swore.
Elias smiled.
"Good."
"Why is that good?" Harcourt demanded.
"Because now we know."
Tesh turned to Elias.
"This attitude is why several observers have placed wagers on your survival duration."
"I'm being bet on?"
"Extensively."
"Can I bet on myself?"
"That would constitute market manipulation in several jurisdictions."
"I like your civilisation less by the minute."
Tesh's eyes moved to a monitor showing the mana-electric converter.
"That device is a problem."
The room quieted.
Elias stepped closer.
"Why?"
"Because your species has discovered, in four local days, a route that many integrated cultures do not develop for centuries."
Priya smiled.
"We're clever."
"You are industrial," Tesh corrected.
Elias's smile faded into something more thoughtful.
Tesh continued.
"Magic tends to encourage individual specialisation. A powerful practitioner solves problems personally. Your civilisation developed while such individuals did not exist. You built grids. Standards. interchangeable components. Machines."
"Mass production," Elias said.
"Yes."
Tesh looked directly at him.
"If you successfully industrialise arcane effects, Earth will not develop like most new worlds."
"Good."
"That depends upon who is watching."