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Cam studies. He studies madly. The next week elapses with him having very little sense of individual days. He doesn't want anyone to know anything special is up, so he goes to a movie with Renée and to a friend's house after school to play Nintendo games and Charlie gets his weekly phone call and he shows up to his classes and gets his homework adequately done. But other than that he studies. He wants to be fluent in this thing inside three months if possible. It's easier than Spanish, he's motivated, he can use it in everyday conversations as he asks passing animals and convenient plants how smart they are (dogs: smarter than goats; squirrels: about goat level; his friend's hamster: dumb as a rock; shrubs: way dumber than trees; indoor potted rosemary: just a step above grass) and chats with Grace, he's basically dropping himself in an immersion course with some inconvenient English here and there so he can interact with humans. He thinks three months is ambitious but reasonable.
He's not actually doing that many spells. He does wheedle tofu into tastiness on a nightly basis, and when he feels a cold coming on he looks up a spell about that, but he wants to know what he's doing before he gets going on what he most wants to be doing, because he wants to be doing big things. He swore to oppose death. He meant that.
Today he is preparing to oppose death in his backyard. It's threatening rain and he doesn't want to be all the way down the street with Leafy if the clouds open up. The jerk tree doesn't talk to him if he doesn't talk to it and it's perfectly serviceable as something to sit under, anyway.
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lifes_sake
"Yes," says Jellybean, and snickers.
"No," Matilda says kindly.
"No," Matilda says kindly.
lifes_sake
Cam glances between them and decides to believe Matilda.
"Where do you guys operate out of?"
"Where do you guys operate out of?"
"Everywhere," Jellybean says cheerfully.
lifes_sake
"You don't have someplace you reliably sleep in? My manual was pretty clear that I could not put off needing to sleep forever."
"Oh, I can talk myself out of it for a week at a time if I have to," Jellybean says carelessly. "But Tilly can't, so we find hotel rooms or camp out or whatever. Sometimes we go back to her mom's place for a while."
lifes_sake
"Your parents fund the hotel rooms, or you're getting money on your own somehow? Or just teleporting into empty ones, I guess, and confusing the housekeeping staff. I don't think Renée would be on board if I told her I was going to wander the universe and needed cash to stay in a lot of hotels. I might not have quite as much freedom of movement as you guys."
"We have one parent-like figure between the two of us," says Matilda, "and we mostly try not to lean on her too much. When we're on Earth and not staying with her, sneaking into an empty hotel room and cleaning up after ourselves when we leave is usually the way we go. The same when we're other places, if they have hotels there."
lifes_sake
"...Other inhabited planets, let's hear all about that," says Cam.
"There's lots," says Matilda. "We visit them sometimes. Looking for kids in trouble on their Ordeals, or fixing other problems, or just wandering around."
lifes_sake
"Cool. Well, that maybe explains why Earth is so badly run, if everybody's dividing their attention not only between it and endangered stars but also between it and other entire civilizations. Maybe Earth's comparatively nice as these things go."
"There are places that are much better," says Matilda.
"And ones that're much worse," says Jellybean, grinning.
"And ones that're much worse," says Jellybean, grinning.
lifes_sake
"I want to hear all about your exploits on the problem-solving front," Cam says. "Sketch the space for me a bit, you've had longer at this than I have. I was thinking pretty Earth-centrically. ...Say, if stars are people, are planets?"
"Short answer's no," says Jellybean, to that last question.
"I have a longer answer if you want," Matilda says brightly.
"I have a longer answer if you want," Matilda says brightly.
"I've spent a lot of time figuring out what makes the difference to how smart things are," says Matilda. "In creatures with complex nervous systems it's brain activity, mostly the way you'd expect. I haven't figured it out for plants, but it might be partly dependent on size or length of life. In celestial bodies, it's thermonuclear fusion. Stars talk, planets don't."
lifes_sake
"What about objects? Grace's component notebooks were pretty clever even before I zipped them all up into one. My manual's not as bright - or at least doesn't have as much initiative and personality."
"Objects seem to be more case by case," says Matilda. "But I've almost never found one that seemed to have been really smart before anybody started talking to it. Maybe writing in a notebook is enough like talking to count."
Jellybean giggles.
lifes_sake
"...Because I write a lot. There's forty-nine volumes of thoughts composing her."
"That's cute," Jellybean asserts.
"Dunno," he says cheerfully. "Just is."