"One of my reds want to know about someone who got arrested."

"One of your reds. What about them?"

"Whether they're dead."

"I don't know anyone -"

"Yeah but you're in Lakla right now right Kan said you were in Lakla right now and if she's not dead yet -"

" - are you imagining I should walk in there and demand they let her go, with what possible justification -"

"You're the genius."

"At knowing which battles to pick."

"Well. The email just asked whether she was alive so you can just check whether she's alive and then your obligations will obviously be discharged."

"If I can think of a reason I'll swing by."

He actually goes right over, once he's looked up the case and won't sound like an idiot speaking about it. Talks with Kan on the way over, makes a point of saying audibly "I just got here, I'll call you back" as he steps in. People appreciate it when you respect their time. 

He's checking in on that robotics case, heartbreaking, infuriating, if he could perhaps speak with the investigating officers at their earliest convenience...

What, all of them?

"Ideally whoever's following up on making sure we got 'em all but if they're busy - or showering -"

He gets sent to a grey on the case who didn't touch anything at the scene. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"There's going to be an internal investigation into how it leaked - there always is, and it never gets anywhere because the trash alone knows and they're all dead - I don't suppose there are any in a condition to answer questions?"

"It came quietly, I don't think anybody did more than give it a couple thwacks, should be able if it's motivated."

"I might have a couple, is there an arrangement such that I could pose them? - and see its face, unfortunately that's helpful to me."

"It's in a holding booth, they're easy enough to clean we don't have a separate thing for reds."

Nod. "That's fine. What'd this one do -"

"Somebody looked through one of the rioter's everythings, it was talking to at least that one recently. Not 'go kill a roboticist', but like, 'how many eggs did you want' 'four' and that's the floor of the building the poor green was on..."

"Uh huh. If it won't impede your investigation I do want to speak with it."

"Sure. This way."

There'a a booth. It's got a barred glass window and an audio pickup.

And that is the girl Isel asked about, yes. "Not dead yet," he'll tell her, "but not coming home," and then he'll go home himself -

- he could lie, say he wants to track who she talks to and she should be let go for that purpose but it's one more connection he has to the issue he cannot afford to touch - and later if there's reason to call his motives into question - 

- there are sixty-five million of them. 

He taps the audio pickup. "You hear me?"

"Yes sir," comes a soft dull voice.

"Were you informed of the crime in connection with which you've been arrested?"

"No one has even told me what this is about, sir."

"Yesterday Alisek Talmin assisted some co-conspirators in murdering a roboticist and most of their staff, shortly after asking you a grocery order."

"Grocery order? - the eggs? I was making food for a dinner he was supposed to attend and needed to know how many he expected to eat."

He squints through the glass.

Wine-dregs hair in a low ponytail. Staring at her hands. ...springing really badly and trying not to think about it.

Lying.

"Did they plan this with anybody else?"

"Alisek? I don't know - he mostly hangs out with Tiskal." Who is also dead.

"But he was going to make it to your party?"

"It was supposed to be a potluck."

"You have family, Shasali?"

"My parents are alive, sir."

"None of the murderers had any kids, it's kind of interesting."

"Reds often move into inside jobs after they have children if possible, sir."

"Do you have any idea how they learned where the roboticists were?"

"No sir."

Squint.

She doesn't know the details but she knows who knows them.

Well, it'd be a capital crime for anybody. Isel will not find that very reassuring. 

He stands up. 

She looks up briefly at the noise, then back down.

Then, quite unaccountably, there appears a gigantic snake monster with a door-sized mirror for a face. It thrashes around finding its bearings, crashing through the booth wall, and then switchbacks around, putting red and blue both through the aperture.

....quite unaccountably doesn't really cover it -

- where are they -

A temperate forest with plants that are just slightly off.

There's not glass between him and the red anymore.

Yeah he noticed that it's not exactly at the top of his priority list because what the fuck - 

- what's she doing -

Also what-the-fucking at the sudden what the fuck. - noticing that he is also there.

Scrambling to her feet and backing away a few yards.

" - please don't do that I don't have chalk on me and I doubt you do -"

She shivers. She stops.

"Do you have any idea what happened."

"Nosir."

Does he have a cell signal.

Nope. His pocket everything is very confused.

It's in good company. He hasn't spent enough time around trees to be confident these are weird trees but they do look it.

The red holds very still and watches him.

He turns his pocket everything off again and on again. He walks around a bit. 

"All right," he says. "Possibilities: we have been inexplicably teleported to someone's private meditative retreat and they block even emergency cell signal. We have been inexplicably teleported back in time. We have been inexplicably teleported some other place - if it's another planet we're absurdly lucky we can breathe. We have been kidnapped by aliens. Got anything I'm missing?"

"Forward in time?" she suggests after a moment. "Incompatible signal."

"And maybe there's forest around because we finally figured out how to season other places, sure, that could be it." Sigh. "You should calm down, I think you're slightly likelier to get out of this alive than before the inexplicable teleportation."

She does not stop fixedly watching him.

It was not exactly a stirring reassurance but a strong one would have been dishonest.

"If we were brought here deliberately," he says to potential alien kidnappers, "it is our custom to explain why, by who, and for how long. And there are people at home I would be grateful for the opportunity to contact with an explanation."

The trees do not respond.

Was a bit of a long shot.  

"All right," he says. "I think we should probably start walking, there can't be that much forest."

"We," she says, "sir?"

"If we're in someone's bizarre resort or a little bit in the past or the future, you're probably safer if you're not alone and it's not as if whoever owns this land will feel comfortable trusting that you didn't touch anything when there was no one watching, they're gonna want to cordon it off for a few rainstorms anyway. If we're in a situation stranger than that then it seems like two people are probably safer than one, do you disagree?"

Wary watching. "No sir."

"I stopped by because my sister-in-law asked me to, she'd gotten an email from one of your neighbors asking if you were alive and if there was anything we could do."

"Thank you sir." Level, not quite wry.

He sighs. He starts walking. "I'm Aitim."

She doesn't seem to take that as a prompt for her name. She walks, carefully in his field of vision but a pace behind so he can lead.

He knows her name, he looked it up before he went in to talk with her.

If they're on Amenta somewhere it shouldn't be that long before they find civilization.

Well, civilization resolutely fails to appear. Shasali is surreptitiously noting the position of the sun periodically to see if he's walking in circles.

He can manage to keep the sun on his left. How about high-altitude vantage points or power lines or places where he gets cell service, any of those?

Nope!

"When it's dark we'll be able to see if there are any satellites up."

She doesn't answer.

There is the sound of a baby, crying, off thataway. Her head jerks up.

- his too. How far thataway -

Not very! It'd be a few blocks if this were a city.

Hurriedly baby-wards.

There is a baby.

She's lying between a couple of rocks set into a hillside, all alone and naked and wailing occasionally. Looks about three months old.

No belly button.

- the fuck.

Hair color?

Wispy. Navy blue? Dark purple? ...Black?

Shasali makes a whimpering noise.

Poor baby. He picks up the baby and half-unbuttons his shirt so he can tuck the baby in - "you don't happen to be able to feed her do you -"

"No sir."

" - probably they leave them out if they're not permitted, I can't imagine what else - but -"

"She doesn't have a navel."

Nod. Rocking slowly back and forth.

The baby paws vaguely at him and stops crying.

Tiny tiny helpless baby dying alone in the woods. He clings. 

"We don't have diapers or food -"

"If you're worried about being peed on -"

He clings to the baby. "It'd be all right - she's so tiny - but it'd be silly to ask you not to touch her if she's going to need to decontaminate anyway."

"...you can't possibly do a full decontamination on babies every time they poop in the bath or between diapers."

"We're on a different planet, I have no idea what they consider adequate - at home you'd just wipe them off right away, but at home no one abandons babies to die of exposure."

"If they were really worried about pollution they wouldn't have left her. - especially on a slope."

"Well, maybe they don't care at all or maybe someone's supposed to be right by to find her."

"This place is deserted. It doesn't even look like people hike in it."

"Maybe they're smuggling babies out. Tapa had a problem once with the person who was supposed to kill them doing that. Or someone important's baby, if there's a war on."

"Naked on a hill."

"Do you have an idea?"

"No. - sir."

"Well. We're not going to be able to keep her alive very long if we can't find civilization."

"Maybe there's a river to follow or something."

Nod. 

Is there?

Eventually, yes.

Shasali frowns at the water.

"Hmmm?"

"I'm thirsty, sir," she murmurs.

"Is it even safe to drink from rivers?"

"I don't know, but if it takes long enough to find civilization it will be safer than not. Especially for the baby."

"Could boil it but that requires some other things I don't know how to do."

He shrugs his jacket off, dips a sleeve in the water, gives wet sleeve to the baby to suck on. "I can do that for you too and sidestep the concern of offending the locals by polluting their whole water supply but I don't actually have very many articles of clothing and they're not really of fabrics that hold a lot of water and it'd only work once per."

Baby sucks on sleeve, after some fumbling.

"I'm looking for a big leaf or something but I don't see anything," she murmurs.

"Water goes through all kinds of purification anyway, it's probably fine."

She looks at him for a bit, then approaches the river and cups her hands and drinks.

He will do the same thing upstream of her.

And they can follow the water.

Eventually forest gives way to farmland.

Amentans are very relieved. 

Shasali gives the crops a berth.

There's a farmhouse in the distance.

He pauses when they get closer. "Maybe you should take the baby in case abandoned babies aren't - supposed to be brought back - and I can go in and get food and try to figure out enough of the language to - finesse things."

She holds out her arms mutely.

Baby. He does not touch her while transferring baby.

Of course not.

She cradles the baby close and hums to her and sways.

He watches for a second and then sighs and turns around and heads farmhouse-wards.

It's a weirdly low-tech farmhouse. There's a cat sitting on a water barrel. Crumbling mortar. Wood shingles. A chimney.

Maybe they are in the past after all and some society since forgotten by history abandoned their babies to starve once spring ended?

He goes up to the door and waits for a bit before knocking.

Nobody notices him before he knocks. When he does, a woman with brown hair answers the door. She's a little tan but not as much as one would expect from a farmer.

"Hi," he says, presuming this to be totally noncommunicative. "We are very lost, where are we?"

It is in fact totally noncommunicative. She looks at his hair and seems confused and replies in a different language.

Hair-related confusion is mutual! He tries Oahkar and Tapap and Voan and Celen just in case.

Nope!

She calls the cat over. It is not quite a cat, on inspection - it's a respectable shade of orange, but otherwise slightly different from Amentan cats. Possibly just a very different breed. She tells the cat something. The cat looks at Aitim.

 - that means the cat is probably significantly different from a cat and not just a different breed.

He tries talking to the cat.

The cat is not impressed with him saying that he is very lost. The farm woman gestures at the cat.

"- can you tell her that I have not encountered cat-based communication before and am not sure how it works."

Apparently the cat can't do that.

The woman sighs and tells the cat something. The cat turns around once. She tells it something slightly different, and then it turns around twice. She gestures at it again.

 - telling the cat to do things causes the cat to do them, and the cat speaks his language? That's - disturbing, but - 

"Okay. Can you do conditionals - can you turn around in a circle if and only if brown is the most commonly occurring hair color on this planet?"

The cat turns around in a circle. Whether this has any bearing on hair colors locally is unclear.

"Could I have food, water, and a guide to a larger city."

Cat looks at him.

Sigh. He pantomimes instead.

Eventually she points him at a well and offers him a half a loaf of bread and some cucumbers.

He is appropriately appreciative. 

Directions to somewhere that is more populated than here?

With a great deal of uncertainty and furrowed brow she points him in a direction.

It is unlikely she's pointing him into the wilderness, so that's something. 

He heads back to Shasali with cucumbers and bread and possibly-confused directions.

She looks at the cucumbers and bread. The baby is asleep on her shoulder.

"Friendly brown-haired farmer, no signs they have invented electricity, they have a means of communication through giving orders to cats but I couldn't figure it out -" he describes the interaction - "I don't think they could really spare much food but she didn't seem particularly anxious to have foreign visitors with unclear demands and didn't hesitate to point me to their well." He tears the bread into a larger and smaller part, offers her the larger one.

Shasali takes the bread and breaks it into pocket-sized amounts and a little to eat right away.

He eats all of his and one of the cucumbers. "I solicited directions and got pointed that way. I don't think she was clear on what I wanted directions to but a city is the easiest assumption anyway. Is she just sleeping or is she unwell -"

"I think sleeping. I might try to give her a little cucumber if I can mash it enough."

He hands her a cucumber. "At three months they should really be breastfeeding." Sigh. "I think. I don't have kids."

"I don't either." She wedges the cucumber in next to some bread, since the baby is currently asleep.

"Can't afford one?"

"I could."

"It's not that you have mild springs."

"No, sir." She strokes the baby's hair.

"Worried for their future?"

"Yes sir."

"I'm sorry."

She pets the baby.

"Someone is at some point going to notice we don't have permission for the kid, and unless they do that regularly -" shiver -"'oh, we found her in the woods' will be unpersuasive."

Shasali doesn't say anything.

"If it's an auction and they really don't have electricity we're all set but it could just be they haven't got it all the way out here."

"Do you know how to make a lightbulb? Fast enough to get a lot of money quickly?"

"I think I could convince somebody quickly that they'd get more than a credit's worth of money out of having consultants who are from a society more than a hundred years more advanced."

"You don't speak the language. Sir."

He gestures at the pocket everything. He turned it off a while back to save the battery.

"Maybe."

"It's possible to learn a language in a day, I've seen someone do it. But it might not work, or might not be an auction, yes."

She clutches the baby and purses her lips.

"And even if they're all right with the baby, are you going to pretend to be clean forever so you can keep her?"

"Are you going to tell them?" she murmurs.

"Not unless in some respects they are actually a hundred years more advanced than us."

Soft baby. Pet pet.

He keeps walking.

She follows.

"You could tell them I was, you know. I think that's what I'd do in your place, try to learn the language first and set the frame."

She doesn't say anything to that.

Reds are the only people he has met who have the talent of actually being quiet whenever it's probably not in their interests to answer. Most people can't help themselves.

Is there a train station anywhere to be seen.

Nope!

There's a dirt road. With wagon ruts.

He looks at it a bit despairingly. "Well. We'll be rich."

"Yes sir."

"If you're going to pretend you should probably stop that."

Silence.

Sigh. 

They walk. He tries to mentally reconstruct physics and engineering and the Internet.

The baby wakes up and wails. Shasali squeezes cucumber juice into her mouth.

Babies are supposed to get a lot more nutrition than that and they don't know how long she was out there.

"Let me know if you want me to take a turn."

She looks skeptical.

"Easier to believe I'd do that to everybody else? Or did you not believe me about that either?"

"I don't know you."

"We can trade life stories if you want. Some plumbers camped out in my office during the snowstorm but I guess they can't vouch for me. You know Isel."

"Not personally."

"Of her. She didn't feed you all the roboticist's location, did she? I didn't think she knew."

"I don't know anything about that."

He glances curiously at her. "I can't hurt you here, you know."

"I don't know how we got here or if we'll stay here, but I don't know anything anyway."

"I don't blame you."

Walking. Walking.

With a baby who is slowly starving to death on a planet that might not have invented indoor plumbing. He tries to remember if he has ever been this miserable. Maybe when the Voa thing broke. 

This is probably less bad than the Voa thing, it was unlikely he'd do that much good with his life.

The baby gets most of the cucumber juice down. Shasali eats the pulp. The baby rejects tiny crumbs of bread.

A strange whirring noise presages a contraption rolling down the street towing wagonloads of grain sacks. The contraption doesn't appear manned.

Wrong about the tech level, then - maybe they had some kind of disaster, have tech they no longer know how to make? They get out of its way.

Shasali also notes the driverlessness. Shivers once. Doesn't comment.

"Guess I can stop wishing that they'd find a way to get here and find us."

"- mm?"

"Whole planet, practically no one living here - but they have robots."

"Yes," she says softly.

"My wishes won't change things either way but I can't wish they'd find us, given that."

She doesn't even bother looking overtly skeptical.

Sigh. "May I hold her?"

Shasali hesitates, but then holds her in his direction.

He takes her. She's so tiny. 

She grabs his finger. Shasali watches him like she's waiting to catch the baby if he decides to fling her into the street.

He doesn't do that. He beams at her.

They keep walking.

Another contraption approaches, but this one has a person on it and it's coming the other direction. He waves at them as he goes by. Brown skin, black hair.

"Might designate caste some way other than hair color. Might not have it, I guess."

She nods.

"I guess we're sleeping by the side of the road."

She looks ahead at the emptiness before them and the setting sun. "Guess so."

"I sincerely don't think it's in your interests to murder me in my sleep but given the information available to you I think it arguably is so maybe we should talk some more before we sleep."

"...talk about what?"

"I don't know. I've never gotten any reds to talk to me. Isel manages, but I think she manages by doing a lot of things first."

Nod.

"And it's a bit late for that." He snuggles the baby. 

"A bit."

"Are you planning to murder me in my sleep?"

"No."

Snort. "All right."

"Can I have her overnight?"

He hands her back over. 

Shasali cuddles the baby. She finds a reasonably cozy spot to sleep on the side of the road, baby in her arms.

He does not sleep well but they couldn't make more progress in the night anyway.

There are no satellites visible in the sky.

The stars look really incredible, though.

Hooray.

The next day a wagon pulled by a horse and driven by a woman trots by. They are, via pantomime, offered rides. The woman doesn't seem concerned about the baby or surprised that it's naked or anything.

...they would be delighted to accept rides! Does she have anything for food for the baby.

She's got water, that's all she's got that a baby can handle.

She's not looking at them in a manner that suggests she's expecting someone to take the baby. He mentions this to Shasali. "Been wondering if they had some kind of near-extinction catastrophe. The low population density but sophisticated robots - might not have population controls at all, if they're trying to get back to the size for a real industrial civilization..."

"But then why leave her on a hillside naked -"

"I have no idea. 

We could pick a name, if we're going to get to keep her."

"We," says Shasali.

"I know of successful custody arrangments between people who seriously considered killing each other, it's achievable."

"Kalatha."

Giggle. "All right."

Shasali pets Kalatha.

"I know people who have a blue name picked out for their daughter. Most of them are blue, though."

"I wasn't going to have any."

"Yeah."

Pet pet. Humming.

Aitim asks their driver for her name.

She doesn't understand the question until a considerable amount of time has been invested into gesturing but eventually points at herself and says "Witwa."

He is so thrilled about this. "Aitim. Shasali. Kalatha."

She seems a little puzzled about the baby having a name but boops her nose and says "Meha, Kalatha!"

He can't tell if it's puzzled the baby has a name or puzzled by something about the name but she can pronounce it fine so maybe the former. Or maybe it's an out of caste name for whatever caste they are parsing him and Shasali as.

And there are more farmhouses and then there's a walled city.

A walled city. "Don't think there was a disaster after all."

"Why not?"

"The robots still run, it can't have been that long, you can't manufacture them on this tech level. But those walls took a long time to build and only make any sense in the context of very low tech warfare."

"...then what happened?"

"I have absolutely no idea. Maybe there's a higher-tech civilization elsewhere which, uh, isn't conquering them because.....balance of power? Morals? It's probably not morals."

"But why haven't they resolved the tech differential?"

"That's not implausible to me, the thing keeping tech differentials small in our world is mostly that you'd get conquered. There might not be enough people here to actually run an industrial society - or you might need sufficiently smart people, and a small population even with the same average and variance isn't going to have anyone smart enough - or you might need resources you can't get if you have nothing to trade anyone for them."

"But they do have robots."

"I don't think this society could possibly make computer chips. Make something worth trading for them - don't know. Crops that take a lot of land to grow, plausibly. That could be sustainable, export crops and import robots and pocket everythings, as long as no one wanted to conquer you. ...maybe there aren't seasons here."

"They're some kind of alien, does that even matter?"

"I don't know. You need something like that, though, because - well, I'd conquer this place, and I have never met a war I liked."

"To get the robots? You said you didn't want us to have robots."

"I don't want Anitam to have robots, it'd be a disaster. If we had contact at all we'd get robots, wouldn't need a war for that. No, I'd want this place because we could keep everybody and give them two apiece and still fit an extra hundred million people."

"It probably doesn't go on like this forever."

"Couldn't fit that many if we happen to have just had the misfortune of walking and then riding the whole length of the country, I suppose. But it wouldn't have to go on forever."

And here they are at the city! Witwa doesn't stop to shoo them, she proceeds through the streets.

...It's not a very clean city.

 - yikes.

The people don't mind?

Nobody seems alarmed. (Shasali wrinkles her nose and holds Kalatha closer. Kalatha has only peed on her once.)

"Are you bothered by -"

"...I don't know what you think our neighborhoods are like but they don't smell like this."

He curls up unhappily in his seat. "We can't raise her here."

Shasali nods fervently.

"Place that makes the robots probably doesn't take immigrants - ugh -"

"Maybe they take alien immigrants? Anitam would, just on principle - even if they were lower tech, just in case, if it were only a couple - wouldn't it?"

"Yes - definitely -"

"Maybe they will."

Fervent nod. 

Witwa pulls up in front of a four story building with a yard full of children, oddly unclumped in age. She gestures at it.

They obediently hop out of the cart. "Thank you," he says, uncomfortably aware that his father would have become fluent over the course of the cart ride. 

Witwa says something in her language and waves and drives off.

"Well," says Shasali. "I suppose they probably have diapers and baby food here."

"I wonder if kids in daycare in equatorial places have different developmental progress, what with all the -" gesture at the unclumped kids playing. "I doubt they give out diapers for free - and without checking if you have a credit -"

"Witwa dropped us off here..." Shasali says uncertainly.

"And she really, really needs formula -" He reaches for the door.

Inside there are more babies! None of them are younger than Kalatha but they're a wide range of older. There are more kids. There are some adults, looking after everybody. As soon as an adult spots them he holds his arms out for the baby. Shasali flinches.

They're definitely not using hair color to communicate caste but he can't think what they're using instead. They're aliens; it could literally be something he can't see. 

He tries pantomiming that Kalatha needs food.

The person seems to expect Shasali to hand over the baby, but when she doesn't, he shrugs and goes away and comes back with a bottle of milk and a cloth diaper.

Amentans are so relieved. "Maybe they do vaccinations, maybe that's what he wanted?"

"You don't have to be holding a baby to vaccinate it. It's easier if you're not."

"I cannot think of any reason he'd expect us to be, uh, just dropping off the baby."

"Maybe he figured we don't know how to put a diaper on." Shasali has tied the diaper onto the baby and is feeding her; Kalatha sucks industriously.

"I guess there are people who don't know how to put a diaper on."

"Not our age, surely, but... well, it's a weird low tech diaper and we're obviously foreign..."

"Mmmhmm. Even our age, maybe, I'm not sure my husband knows that."

"No?"

"He's watched our cousins but not without the nanny around. Maybe I'm underestimating him - I don't know if I will get the chance to ask -"

Nod. "I'm sorry."

Shrug. "If we do get back Isel will tell me this was - the universe expressing that I wasn't being creative enough at finding a way to get you out."

The guy is holding out his arms for the baby again and Shasali still won't hand her over. The guy is confused. He shrugs and gets what do appear to be primitive vaccinations and administers them while Kalatha remains in Shasali's arms working on her bottle.

He tries to get the words for 'milk' and 'diaper'.

He can get those!

They would like more of those, please, for Kalatha.

There are a whole bunch of bewildered grownups now. They're so confused.

Probably because they don't have a credit! "...leave now with her or keep trying until the police show up -"

"They don't have phones, they can't have good response time - we don't know where else to get milk."

Sigh. "Milk milk milk thank you."

They shrug and hand over another bottle.

"Thank you! Diaper?"

They can have a bunch of those.

This is like less than a day of milk. "Milk milk milk please?" And to Shasali, "don't people sometimes start lactating just from having a baby trying -"

The locals attempt to explain why they can't have more milk. It involves gesturing at an icebox. They are offered juice.

"I've maybe heard of that. I can give it a shot when she's hungry enough to try persistently."

Well, juice is better than nothing. "Thank you!"

This gets him the word for "you're welcome".

"I think they can't keep more than a day's supply of milk cold because they haven't invented refrigeration, and that means neither can we."

"We don't in fact even have an icebox."

"Maybe we can find housing near here and get milk from whoever supplies it to them and figure out the language quickly and then find the embassy for robots place."

"Maybe. Maybe we can come back here a lot for milk, if I can't feed her."

Nod. 

"Should help that it's spring." She pets the baby. "How were you thinking of finding housing?"

"Everything in the city's going to smell like -" suppressed violent shiver - "but we can probably trade clothes for money, they're foreign and better fabrics and I think I will know if I'm being underpaid even without speaking the language."

"I don't think clothes are optional here, we'd have to trade them for more clothes and money."

"The jacket I expect I can get away without. More than that maybe in a day or two when we speak the language better - I really wish my family were here -"

"I could do without my sweater but it's - secondhand - maybe a tailor could make it into something else or they won't care."

"Or I can wear it and sell my shirt too."

"Or that. Kalatha's peed on it."

"Everything and everyone here is unclean and I am going to have to invent the shower but in the meantime I don't think I gain much by being fussy."

She nods.

"Back before we invented indoor sanitation I think child mortality was above twenty percent - we can't raise her like this -"

"We'll have to get some place out somewhere with its own well and - commission things -"

Nod. 

" - all right, I think we should get out of here before we're any stranger, I'll see about money..."

"I think you're going to be better at the language than I am."

He makes a little bit of a face. "Probably. You can take her somewhere that doesn't smell, maybe, and wait."

"At least they don't seem to be making the walls difficult to get past."

"Historically some places had a setup where if there were raiders coming you'd go into the walled city, close up, wait for them to leave or for your nation's army to come, go back out once they left. I guess if you see everyone going in -"

"Right. Follow the crowd."

"On the bright side if we managed to communicate that you are descended from undertakers I cannot imagine they'd care."

"I'm getting that impression." She smiles faintly.

"Take care."

She nods and gives him her sweater and takes beverages and baby outside the city again.

And he goes wandering for something that looks like a market and tries not to feel sick and tries to stop absently scratching his skin bloody and tries to stop twitching because it feels like something is crawling under his pant leg against his skin and

 - eventually - 

- watches the people and listens to them.

Market!

There are robots. Some of them move in frankly bizarre ways - when still they don't look articulated and the skin doesn't look flexible. People talk to alien animals, which perform complex tasks. There are no screens anywhere but lights and shadows sometimes move independently.

Literally no one has a baby. There are some kids running around, usually in groups that don't look related with a minder, or on their own or with friends if they're older. People are with their significant others and friends - no one is hanging out with people who look related to them. No one has a belly button.

They find Aitim's hair mildly interesting but don't follow up when it transpires that he can't explain it to them. Their hair comes in black (usually) and brown and a rare mild orange and a range of weak yellows. Old people go grey. They have more sexual dimorphism than Amentans; men are taller and broader and hairier. They are quite low tech but the robots make up for some of it - robots are doing particularly repetitive labor all around, including some street cleaning, albeit to a standard Amenta would consider deeply inadequate.

The market sells robots and ice blocks and produce and street food and caged birds and books (they do seem to have the printing press) and clothes and jewelry and spices and dishes!

Well.

Here is a jacket, made to exacting if foreign standards and with high-quality if alien material, which he would like to trade for currency, will one of the clothing vendors with a more eclectic collection entertain that transaction? He has about a dozen words now. "I need money, sell jacket."

The clothing vendor clucks at his accent and peers at the jacket. Picks a burr from sleeping rough out of the back of it carefully. Lowballs him.

Headshake. "Foreign, not child."

Vendor snorts, adds ten percent.

Aitim is handicapped in negotiating by not knowing any words for numbers. He shakes his head again and starts to take the jacket back.

"Ah-ah-ah -" Vendor tries throwing in a hat.

- he'll do a shirt.

...okay but not that shirt this other one that is cheaper. It fits him better!, seems to be the justification, though the vendor is chattering quite fast.

It is a shirt and will later enable him to sell his and wear something that is not a peed-on sweater so it will do. 

The vendor will also buy his previous shirt. The first offer is still a lowball but by a narrower margin.

Headshake. "Still not child."

Snort. New offer and he didn't like the hat but maybe he wants socks?

He'll do pants.

Fiiiiine. ...the vendor will also buy his pants! He skips the lowball.

He would, uh, need a place to change, but then sure.

He can duck behind the stall just here.

Aitim can wear his new shirt and pants and hand over the old ones. There are worrying scratches on both arms and both legs.

Vendor clucks at him over that.

Vendor could consider giving him enough money that he can arrange a living situation where everything is not literally covered in shit but he doesn't have the vocabulary for that.

Instead he thanks him cheerfully.

The vendor thanks him cheerfully too! Now Aitim has local clothes and some literal coins made of metal.

They might actually be worth the value of the metal they are made of, too. Kantil would be jumping up and down. He buys the cheapest food available which locals aren't avoiding and goes to find Shasali.

She's sitting on a rock not far from the entrance they came in by. She's got her shirt unbuttoned and is having a mimed and confusedly multilingual argument about something with a local.

...can he follow the argument at all?

The local is upset about the unbuttoned shirt! Kalatha is not attempting to nurse right now, but presumably was recently.

He walks over and puts a hand on Shasali's shoulder (....can't make anything worse...) and tells the stranger. "Foreign. Hungry child. Please go or help money."

The foreigner has strong opinions and expresses them loudly!

"Go, or help money."

The foreigner considers this response completely unhelpful! And reaches for Kalatha.

No!

Shouting local! Crying Shasali!

"Let's get out of here."

She clutches the baby and nods.

"I guess this place has a taboo on public breastfeeding but emptying your chamberpot out your window is just fine." Hurried walking. 

"Is that what it was about? I couldn't - couldn't tell -" She buttons her shirt one-handed.

"I am not completely sure but I think so. It's okay, I think we can afford to stay somewhere now and their precious eyes can be protected from partial nudity." He shows her the literal actual coins. "Don't ask me what the inscription says. Probably whoever's in charge."

Shasali nods.

"In interactions where people aren't willing to murder you for seeming worryingly agentic it's probably wiser to get out right away."

"I didn't know what she was saying. I could rule out 'you're red and exist', but - if I could've figured it out and just solved the problem -"

"I can try to teach you the language but it might be slow going, has some phonemes Anitami doesn't and that's hard on adult language-learners."

She nods.

If he also thinks statistically speaking she's probably not that smart he doesn't say so. Here are the twelve words he picked up today for clothing negotiations.

She repeats them carefully.

Combinations! "Foreign, not child. Child not foreign. Not shirt, pants. Shirt or money. Shirt or pants." Also he's pretty sure "blue" is such and such because people were asking about his hair, but they were just asking about his hair - "if they do caste I have no idea how they signal it. Could even be something we can't see."

"Has anyone seemed to be drawing conclusions about yours?"

"'Foreign' is definitely overriding whatever else it might communicate. We can see what they think once there's no accent and foreign clothes confounding it - though by then I might be green -"

"If they don't signal caste by hair color I can't imagine it will matter what color yours grows in."

"They could be doing something subtle - don't see in color but saturation means something, say - but I don't think so. They're also more differentiated by sex and I have no idea how the robots work or what material they're made of but it's something we don't have. They look like stone statues when they're still, but they move like whatever it is is extraordinarily flexible."

"The animals are - something. People keep talking to them. It sounds like commands."

"The farmer assumed I was familiar with it. I have no idea - they can also do something with light - little lights racing around everywhere - if not for the walled city I'd think maybe the animals are robots too, made replacement for people who wanted pets that weren't gross like the real thing -"

"I am pretty sure not all the feces in there belonged to people."

He gestures at the walled city. "Yup. Bona fide preindustrial society that inexplicably has robots and can command animals, here."

"What are we doing for a place to stay?"

"I'm not sure how much money is reasonable for a room somewhere but I think this'll get us through until I speak the language and can ask about where the robots come from - and perhaps about who's in charge, the local rulers might not have indoor plumbing but you can probably substitute for a lot with servants - or robot servants -"

She doesn't even shiver this time. She nods.

"I want to know more about the local leadership before we try that but I'm optimistic currently."

"Why?"

"No one dragged us off to meet them at once, they were happy to give us as much food for the baby as they could keep cold even though we were doing something highly irregular, didn't see any violence in the marketplace. Charity, unobtrusive reasonably effective law enforcement and nobody desperate to come to the favorable attention of their government are all good signs."

"Because it means they have - spare money, rule of law, and not a permissions system?"

"Yep. And no present pressing cause to be suspicious of foreigners, I think we'd have gotten a less friendly and more urgent reception if they were at war or anticipating it." 

She nods. "And nobody's tried to take the baby or demanded ID. Except that one angry person but she didn't seem like she was official."

"That they wouldn't check that is a bit bizarre, really, but maybe they're just presuming our nation of origin will hold us responsible."

"Maybe. Do they seem to have a guess about where we're from?"

"I got asked a couple things that might have been placenames and people tried a couple other languages, but not confident guesses. I assume people tried robots-exporter and we are slightly more mysterious for not speaking that one."

"Can you tell if this city self-governs or if it's part of a larger country?"

"If there's a larger country I do not think it exercises a lot of day-to-day authority but I can't imagine cities managing without some kind of structure within which they'd negotiate population. I guess maybe if robots-exporter is enforcing you wouldn't have lots of city-states trying to sneak things past each other."

She nods. "What is it most useful for me to do besides look after Kalatha while you pick up the language?"

"Do you know things about plumbing?"

"Probably more than you but I've never worked as a plumber."

"You probably also know more than me about stretching a food supply...do reds have better coping mechanisms for everything being constantly unclean or are you just mostly hyposensitive..."

"We don't mind each other at all. Plumbers get used to plumbing but it's not appealing - I think we might be hyposensitive to bodies but I'm not sure whether everyone would be if it weren't for acculturation or if there's separate mechanisms and that's one we've bred for enough - garbage smells and may contain unexpected sharp objects so one has to be careful with it but it's just garbage, you've been in rooms with garbage in them if not for long."

"Everyone might be if it weren't for acculturation, I think there were primitive societies that held that touching someone just-dead was fine. We mostly have disposal chutes for garbage."

"Not for long," she repeats, "but nothing magic happens to it except it gets all mixed up. Our collectors give rebates to some businesses who dispose of things separately so there's not kitchen grease on the remaindered clothes or water damage to the electronics; those things are unobjectionable."