The next morning the novices attended Comparative Theology.
It was everyone's least favourite lesson.
Not because it was difficult.
Because it required absolute silence.
Magister Voss taught it.
He was older than Kallix-9.
Far older.
Almost nothing remained of his face.
Only one eye.
One cheek.
Part of a forehead.
Everything else had become polished steel.
His voice emerged through layered vox-grilles.
"Ignorance," he said,
"is not innocence."
He wrote a single symbol.
☼
"The Imperial Creed."
Another.
⚙
"The Cult Mechanicus."
Another.
∞
"The Ruinous Powers."
No one moved.
"Question."
His remaining eye found Cael.
"You."
Cael stood.
"What is heresy?"
An easy question.
Several novices relaxed.
Cael answered.
"Deviation from sanctioned truth."
"Insufficient."
"Harmful deviation."
"Insufficient."
"Knowingly harmful deviation."
"Better."
Voss nodded once.
"What if sanctioned truth is incomplete?"
The room froze.
No novice asked that.
Ever.
Cael hadn't intended to.
It simply...
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followed.
Voss watched him.
"Repeat."
"What if sanctioned truth is incomplete?"
No one breathed.
Even Doxa, observing from the rear, became motionless.
Finally—
Voss laughed.
Not loudly.
Not warmly.
A dry mechanical crackle.
"The correct question."
Every novice stared.
Voss continued.
"Heresy is not asking whether knowledge is incomplete."
He tapped the cog symbol.
"The Mechanicus exists because knowledge is incomplete."
Another tap.
"Heresy begins..."
He looked directly at Cael.
"...when certainty outruns evidence."
The words settled over the room.
"The fool believes he already knows."
"The priest searches."
"The heretek concludes."
Voss erased the symbols.
"Remember this."
"The greatest danger to knowledge..."
He paused.
"...is not ignorance."
Another pause.
"It is satisfaction."
After class, Elian caught up with Cael.
"You almost got yourself executed."
"I asked a question."
"You questioned doctrine."
"No."
"You questioned whether doctrine could be incomplete."
Cael frowned.
"Voss agreed."
"This time."
They walked together.
"I don't understand."
"You think because Kallix and Voss answer your questions..."
Elian stopped.
"...that everyone will."
"They won't."
"They absolutely won't."
That afternoon, Cael found Kallix-9 inside the Eastern Data Reliquary.
It was unlike any place he had seen.
There were almost no machines visible.
Only shelves.
Millions of tiny crystal wafers.
Bronze cylinders.
Memory scrolls sealed in glass.
Even paper.
Actual paper.
Protected inside inert atmosphere cases.
"What is this?"
"Knowledge."
"I thought knowledge was stored in cogitators."
"It is."
"So why keep this?"
Kallix-9 walked to one sealed case.
Inside rested a single handwritten page.
The ink had faded brown.
"This document is four thousand years old."
Cael stared.
"Can it be digitized?"
"It has been."
"Then why preserve the original?"
"Touch the glass."
Cael did.
Nothing happened.
"What changed?"
"Nothing."
"Exactly."
Kallix-9 looked at the ancient page.
"The information survived digitization."
He touched the glass himself.
"But the object remains."
Cael remembered Doxa's broken gear.
Knowledge.
Given form.
"The object matters."
"Sometimes."
"Why?"
Kallix-9 smiled.
A tiny movement.
Barely visible beneath iron.
"That..."
he said,
"...is one of the oldest arguments within the Mechanicus."
They continued deeper.
Past forbidden stacks.
Past chained vaults.
Past doors requiring Kallix's personal authorization.
Eventually they reached a small reading room.
No machines.
No cables.
Just books.
Thousands of them.
Cael stared.
"I didn't know these still existed."
"Most people don't."
"Why keep books?"
"They cannot be remotely altered."
Cael blinked.
Kallix nodded.
"A cogitator may be corrupted."
"A data archive rewritten."
"A transmission intercepted."
He picked up a leather-bound volume.
"This..."
he said,
"...must be physically destroyed."
He handed it to Cael.
It felt...
alive.
Not literally.
Warm.
Worn smooth by countless hands.
He opened it.
Someone had written tiny corrections in the margins.
Different handwriting.
Different centuries.
Someone had spilled oil across one page.
Another had repaired a torn corner.
It was...
used.
People had touched this.
People long dead.
"This belonged to someone."
"Many someones."
"They left marks."
"They did."
Cael turned another page.
"I know this feeling."
"Do you?"
"My wooden horse."
Kallix looked surprised.
"The object remembers."
The priest nodded slowly.
"Better."
He corrected himself.
"No."
He smiled again.
"Much better."
As evening approached...
Kallix unlocked one final cabinet.
Inside rested a simple metal box.
No ornament.
No decoration.
Only a seal.
"What is it?"
"My first interface."
Cael looked up.
"You kept it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it reminds me that I was once frightened."
"You?"
"Very much."
"You still are."
Kallix did not answer immediately.
Finally—
"Yes."
"Of what?"
The priest looked toward the towering shelves.
"That one day..."
His organic eye drifted toward his mechanical hand.
"...I will no longer remember why I kept this."
The room became very quiet.
Cael thought about the litany.
About Nemi.
About Mara.
About the wooden horse.
About the blue glass.
About remembering.
Not facts.
Reasons.
Perhaps...
he thought...
those were different things.
He touched the small metal box.
Cold.
Simple.
Ordinary.
Yet Kallix had preserved it for decades.
Not because it was valuable.
Because it reminded him of the boy he had once been.
Cael wondered...
if one day...
he would keep his own first interface for the same reason.
He hoped so.
Then another thought arrived.
One that frightened him.
He hoped...
he would remember why.