Someone hears her. 

They're a patrol ship on the lookout for problems planet-side, not suddenly appearing civilians in space. And they don't speak the language. It's - probably a trap by the Enemy. Most things are probably a trap by the Enemy. But they call it in, and - 

"Bring it in."

       "Just because you don't recognize the language? With all due respect -"

"Did I say that was my reason?"

       "I know that was your reason, sir, you were looking inclined to leave it until I mentioned -"

"Do you argue all your orders? Bring it in."

Ohhh man that's a ship. Definitely not the support ship. Maybe not even an Alteri ship, she doesn't recognize the design, though it's possible some other house is experimenting with designs she hasn't seen. There's only one other group she knows of that builds its own starships. She is going to be in so much trouble when the Alteri figure out how to follow her through the gate. They're probably gonna think she was collaborating with the Carthons somehow. Maybe she'll get lucky, and someone will panic and hit her kill switch before they can recapture her?

Ugh, that's a terrible line of thought. She bites her lip. If they're going to kill her for desertion anyway, she should at least go through the effort of actually trying to desert. 

She waits for the ship.

It's a big ship, and doesn't look entirely equipped for rescue of single lost workers; this'll go faster if she can manuever to its airlock herself. They tell her that, but in a language that won't be at all familiar.

She does not understand the language, but she sees the airlock and connects the dots. Her suit doesn't have much fuel and the thrusters aren't great for maneuverability, but she's a professional. Or would be, if Liars could be professionals.

She propels herself toward the airlock.

They'll let her in. It's a big airlock. Maybe these aliens are really really large or something. It's also a pretty airlock, if she notices that kind of thing.

She notices! She is not used to pretty airlocks. She's not really used to pretty anything. It's really weirdly big, maybe she's misremembering how big Carthons are.

"Hello?"

There are a lot of things she could try saying, but she can't immediately think of any that will be received well regardless of whether this is a Carthon ship or a really weirdly big Alteri ship, so sticking to "hello" is probably safer.

The external door closes. The internal one doesn't open. They ask a question in seven different languages she doesn't speak.

She spreads her open palms and hopes they recognize it as a sign for lack of understanding. Clearly they don't speak Etra La - which is weird, that should be one of the first languages they'd think to try, whether the ship is Carthon or Alteri. She tries the hand signs associated with Confederate One, then tries the language of her home colony, without expecting it to work. A few words of English, though she doesn't actually know enough to communicate if they did happen to recognize it.

Nope. 

There's a pause and then the door opens. 

They're not Alteri or Carthons. They're - much more like Liars than either of those but not all that much like Liars - taller, their faces sculpted just a little differently, and armed and in uniform. 

Oh man. OK. Probably an Alteri ship if they have Liars with them, assuming these are Liars. Sometimes they breed special populations that are supposed to be good at particular things, maybe this is one of those situations. Maybe there is some perfectly good explanation for why they don't recognize Confederate One, even though literally everyone recognizes Confederate One. 

She keeps her hands open and doesn't move, because she really really doesn't want to do anything to make them think she's going to be anything other than entirely cooperative.

They look nervous, annoyed, suspicious. 

They search her. 

Someone hands her a piece of ribbon and indicates that she should tie up her hair.

She has a handful of repair tools tied to the outside of her suit, and doesn't object to them being taken. There's nothing but a thin layer of regulation clothing inside, with the House Tellari seal stamped onto the front of her shirt. There's a thin scar on the back of her neck that suggests a previous surgical incision.

She ties up her hair. Tries to look less afraid than she is, only partially succeeds. At least nobody's paralyzing her, that's either pretty decent of them or a sign that they can't do that. Good news either way.

They lead her out of the airlock. 

The ship is built around an enormous courtyard with climbing vines and leafy trees and a harp in the center which someone is playing. There are enclosed rooms around the courtyard; they all have balconies. She can see maybe fifty people. All of this variant of Liars, if that's indeed what they are, and all in uniform. 

They take her to a quiet conference room with one wall partially open to the courtyard and the other with a view of the stars.

OK, that's weird. Nobody lives like this. Maybe someone lives like this on Earth, but not anywhere else, and definitely not in space. Except for these people, apparently. 

She really wants to pace around the room, but really doesn't want to look like she's likely to be restless or impulsive or in any way a problem.

She sticks to staring at the courtyard.

One of them sits down at the table and smiles at her. It's not the friendliest smile in the world but it's definitely intended as a smile.

"Ettelië," he says, gesturing at himself.

She sits down across from him, folding her hands in her lap. She tries smiling, but she can't keep it up, so she just bows her head and tries to look inoffensive.

"Ettelie," she repeats, wincing at her own mispronunciation. It doesn't sound like a number, but then there are probably houses that don't use numbers. She considers giving him her name, but that feels way too informal for whatever's happening. She indicates herself. "Nine-seven-eight-one-six Tellari."

"Nine seven eight one six Tellari," he echoes. His pronunciation is better. He pulls out - a few trinkets, apparently. A touchscreen stylus and a ring and a ribbon. He names those, too.

She repeats the words. She tries her best to match his pronunciation, but she isn't great at it. She's better at remembering the words, mouthing each a few times in an effort to get it to stick.

He wants her word for the trinkets, too. He wants to count to twelve. He hands her the objects and requests them back and wants her to do the same.

It hadn't really occurred to her that these people would be interested in learning Etra La. Alteri rarely bother. It takes her a second to realize, and she reflexively apologizes when she does. She is beginning to suspect that there are maybe not any Alteri around, in which case what the hell, and in which case she really needs to learn how to talk as soon as possible.

She cooperates as far as she's able.

He's pleased with that. More things to name, more complicated formulations - "these ones are mine, these ones are yours", "put these ones over there" - and eventually he pulls out a tablet computer with pictures of lots of things to name, and names them all in his own language.

She does her best. She can't remember everything in one go - her memory is good, but not ridiculously good - and at times she's frustrated by the amount of repetition she needs, even though she's concentrating her hardest and picking things up relatively quickly. She helpfully offers her own words for everything, sometimes biting her lip and thinking for a moment before giving her best approximation. 

Ves would be so much better at this. She doesn't want to wish that Ves were here, because the important thing is that Ves is in the Sol system where it's safe, but it would still be super convenient if Ves were here.

He doesn't seem particularly impatient or frustrated. Though his memory does in fact seem to be perfect, or nearly so. After they've been at it for a few hours someone brings food. It's not familiar but it smells good.

She asks if she's allowed to eat the food. Really hopes she's getting the grammar right.

"Yes. Eat a little, see if the food is safe, Liars on Endorë this could eat but maybe you are different."

"Thank you."

She eats a little.

"It's good."

"That's good. As much as you want, then."

She raises her eyebrows a little - really? - but she thanks him again and eats. 

He goes over to the balcony and starts singing.

She is very quiet and listens attentively.

They sing where she's from. People probably sing everywhere. She hasn't heard anyone sing like that. Not for a really long time, anyway, too long for her to be confident in any comparisons she might make.

When she hasn't touched the food in a while he stops singing and says "do you want to teach us more, or sleep?"

She really wants to sleep and really wants to be able to say complicated things and really wants to know what is going on.

"I want to be helpful?"

"We want language, know who you are, know how you got there. If too much for before sleep, sleep, and then learn more later."

She bites her lip, thinking.

"I want to know more about this place. But I should probably sleep. At home they would make me sleep."

"Do you need to be made to sleep?"

She makes a face and shakes her head. "No. Thank you. I can sleep."

"All right. This way."

This room, too, has a balcony looking out on the courtyard. It also has a bed, a dresser, a large glass screen and a bathroom.

This is... really weirdly nice and spacious and weird.

She thinks about asking him whether the whole thing is for her, but obviously it's for her, so she just thanks him and goes inside and waits to see if they're going to let her be alone.

Yep, they leave.

They probably have cameras. They probably don't have psyons, they wouldn't be putting this much effort into the language thing if they could read her mind. That's something. 

She washes herself off in the bathroom and tries to sleep in the bed. It's big and weird and entirely too comfortable, and she finds herself silently crying into the pillow about how everyone here has been nice and if she goes home house Tellari might kill her, and how if she doesn't she's never going to see Taz and Ves again, and she doesn't even want to think about that. But she's going to need to sleep at some point if she wants to be helpful, and she does.

She grabs some bedding and curls up in the far corner of the room where nothing can sneak up behind her, even as she tells herself that's stupid and that literally anyone could sneak up on her while she was sleeping, and probably they wouldn't need to sneak up on her anyway because she's outgunned a million to one and really doesn't have any other options.

And there she sleeps.

They do have cameras, and no one bothers her while she's asleep. 

    "Seems human."

      "Uh huh. And how'd she get there -"

    "Accident of some kind. Maybe tomorrow we'll have the vocabulary to figure it out."

       "A Maia could seem human as long as they wanted."

"No," Curufin says, "that's misleadingly phrased. There exists a Maia or two who could seem human-with-unfamiliar-languages as long as they wanted. But not many of them. And playing games with us aboard your ship is honestly where I'd want a Maia capable of that."

    " - sure, sir."

"Get the whole story, then we'll make our decisions."

She wakes up four hours later on her own, with no idea what time it is. She washes her face off in the bathroom and then looks out over the balcony.

Pretty. Why is everything here so pretty.

Some people are out on their balconies singing. 

The closet has uniforms, not in her size.

It doesn't occur to her to change clothes. These are her clothes.

...Technically they're not her clothes, but they're the closest thing she has, and she's going to keep them.

About twenty minutes after she wakes up someone brings in breakfast.

She thanks the person who brings it, and manages to restrain herself from asking permission to eat (though she spends about half a minute thinking about it). She instead asks when they're planning to continue where they left off yesterday.

She eats.

"Ettelië can come in to learn with you again once you are done eating."

She eats quickly, and then is ready to continue.

Imrainai has a bunch of questions. She doesn't need to ask them now, but she would like to know whether she should try to ask some of them, or whether what they are doing now is more important and she should wait.

She can totally wait if she should wait.

"You can try to ask questions, that is good."

She'd like to know if they have a word for what system they're in now. She'd like to know if anyone else has appeared here before the way she did. She'd like to know what this ship is doing out here and whether it's controlled by any particular country or person or group. She'd like to know whether they report to Alteri, but is not super sure how to ask that one. 

She'd sort of like to know why everything is so pretty, but that's really not very important and she doesn't want to be a bother and they should really feel free to ignore it if it's a bother.

It's called Endorë. No one else has appeared here and they didn't know it was possible for her species (which they call humans). This ship is a patrol ship for the Noldor; it occasionally intercepts enemy ships or enemy weapons in low orbits but mostly it just looks out for trouble. 

Their species needs things to be pretty or they can't be in them for very long.

OK. This makes sense, mostly. The bit about pretty things is weird, but OK.

"So you don't have any - we call them Alteri, they're big insects that build ships and control lots of star systems? I didn't think there were any - humans? - any humans outside of Earth who didn't answer to Alteri. I've heard things about people taking over ships, but I don't know if they're true, and nobody with a whole planet."

"We don't have any of those. There are humans on Endorë but not many of them; Eru added them after the fighting had already started."

"Who's Eru? ...how did he add them?"

"Eru is the creator of all the worlds we know of. He can do anything. He wanted there to be humans so then there were."

"...oh."

OK. Well. Hm.

Maybe people were right about the Alteri not creating humans. Or maybe these people are mistaken. ...no, she's probably more likely to be mistaken about something like this, how would she know where humans came from?

"I can try to answer any questions you have. I don't know if I'll be able to, but I can try."

"How did you appear here?"

"There was a gate. A big metal ring in space, in the same system as Earth. The Liars there made it a long time ago, supposedly to travel over long distances. It was broken when we found it, but the Alteri had us spend months trying to fix it. None of the Alteri ships managed to pass through, so we assumed it wasn't working. I passed through by accident and ended up here. I'm not sure why it sent me here in particular."

"Do you know how to build such a thing?"

"No. I don't know of anyone who does. I didn't work on creating the replacement parts, either, I just installed them."

"Can you tell us about the Alteri?"

"Yeah. Lots of things. Um, they're big insect people who've conquered I think three peoples, the Thieves and the Sluggards and the Liars. I'm not sure how many star systems they control, at least a hundred. They're at war with the Carthons, and they'll probably still be at war with the Carthons when my great-grandchildren are dead. They live for longer than Liars, but they're awake for less time; they have to spend a lot of their life in long sleep cycles. Um, they speak to each other with noises and light patterns on the front of their chest and the back of their abdomen - I can't make the noises or the light patterns, but Liars use hand signs that correspond to the lights. I can teach you their most common language that way, if you want to learn it. Is there anything in particular - ?"

"Why are they at war?"

"So, um, I'm not an expert or anything, this is just what they told us, I don't know if it's right, but the Carthons are supposed to be the oldest spacefaring race in the galaxy. Our galaxy, anyway, I don't know whether that's the same one as this one. They're the ones who gave the Alteri space flight. They also demanded that the Alteri make a bunch of changes to their society - they tried to engineer away most of the Alteri's genders at one point, there's an epic poem about it but I don't remember all the details - and when the Alteri had amassed enough power, they rebelled and tried to take over as many Carthon systems as possible. The empires are too large and space flight's too slow for them to make much obvious progress during any single person's lifetime, but they're also not willing to make peace. The Earth ceasefire is the only long-term exception I've heard of."

"What do you know about their weapons?"

"Not a ton? I'm pretty sure they have warships that can make whole planets uninhabitable, though they usually colonize and take slaves instead."

"Are they going to come and find you?"

She winces. Not a pleasant line of thought, but a necessary one. "Maybe? I would have expected them to follow me through the gate almost immediately, but if nobody else has appeared then there must be something preventing them from using it. I don't know why that would be or how long it'll last. We'd just gotten the gate working, we don't know its limits yet."

She pauses and bites her lip again. Then, "If they do follow me, there's a good chance they'll decide that this was an intentional escape attempt and kill me for it. I don't know that they will, they might decide it was an accident and return me to my previous duties, but if I had to bet I'd bet that they kill me to discourage anyone else who might be tempted to have a similar accident."

"...I don't really want to die," she says, quietly.

"Well, we don't have to tell them you came through."

She nods. She wants to say thank you, but it doesn't sound like a commitment, and her voice isn't working very well anyway at this particular second. She clears her throat.

"OK. That makes sense. Anything else?"

"Do you know how to contact them?"

Swallow. This is not a pleasant line of thought either, but if they don't find a way to contact them then she's got no hope of seeing Taz or Ves or anyone else she's ever cared about, so.

"Not with the material I have, not over this distance. There are simple star charts loaded into my spacesuit's computer, but I'm not sure if they'll be complete enough to determine their exact coordinates from wherever we are. If we had access to a planetary ansible then I could maybe contact them through the Earth Carthon embassy, but I've never even seen an ansible and I have no idea how to make one."

"It is not something we're familiar with. We'll see what we can learn from the star charts. Do you expect they would be hostile towards us?"

"Best guess? Probably not immediately, but it depends which ones you run into and how they estimate your military strength compared to theirs. The house leaders wouldn't start another major war with an another advanced group, they need to conserve resources to fight the Carthons and any political enemies they've made within the Confederacy. If they think they can win without major casualties, they'll probably attack. Sometimes younger commanders from minor houses take stupid - "

She winces. Takes a deep breath.

"Um, sorry. Sometimes younger commanders from minor houses take inadvisable risks in pursuit of personal glory. But there shouldn't be any large-scale military opposition, not if you can defend yourselves and you don't attack them first. Especially not if you contact the ones around Earth, they're more likely to be searching for allies than more enemies."

He needs clarification of a lot of those words, but eventually nods. "Thank you. Do you have more questions for us?"

"Can you, uh, tell me what's going to happen to me? Just, um - am I a prisoner or am I going to be assigned to work somewhere or...?"

"You are welcome here. You are not a prisoner. We're going to stay out on patrol a while, though, we might not reach the planet's surface for some time. We do not need you to do anything though we will be eager to keep learning about you."

She is not super clear on what not being a prisoner entails, but she nods.

"I can definitely keep telling you things. I'd like to learn more about you and about your planet, too, but I don't think I know enough to know which questions I should be asking right now, exactly?"

"I can try to explain - long ago we lived on Valinor. The Valar rule there. Melkor is a Vala who likes to hurt people. They let him go and he went to Endorë to hurt people. And we went to Endorë to war with him."

"This war is ongoing?"

"Yes. It has been for many human lifetimes."

She nods. She is sort of used to intractable wars that might as well have been going on forever, though it does mean these people can probably only devote so many resources to fighting anyone else.

"You said the Valar rule where you're from? Are they - like you?"

"They are a different species. They cannot die."

"Oh. Well." So these people are ruled over by aliens. She frowns for a moment, trying to figure out how to ask about the extent of the aliens' control over them in a way that isn't completely thoughtless. The situation here might still be a major improvement; they seem to be treated nicely, if the quality of the ship is any indication. "So does this ship report to the Valar, then? You're still getting orders from them?"

"Oh, no, we - when we left Valinor we told them we would not listen to them anymore."

Confused frown. "And they accepted that?"

"They were not very happy but they did not follow us."

"Oh." Pause. "The Carthons probably wouldn't have let people do that, and the Alteri would have killed people for trying. But it's good that you got to try. So you're independent now, you only report to other Noldor? And, um, Eru, I guess?"

She is sort of unclear on how Eru fits into this, but you probably can't just stop listening to a being who can create Liars out of nothing.

"Eru doesn't tell anyone what to do, he just ...does things. We report to our King and he's a Noldor King, yes."

She nods, though she is not super sure she knows what a king is. But it's promising. She doesn't really know anything about the Noldor, but based on the available evidence she is pretty sure she would rather report to them than to house Tellari. 

"Oh, um, do you have houses here? The Alteri have a central command structure, but in practical terms it doesn't do very much, especially on planets like Earth that are outside the stellar network. The planets are controlled by councils that consist of leaders appointed by each house represented on the planet, and everyone has to follow the rules of both their local government and their house. Most of the laws vary by house. So uh, I was born under house Kendari, which has its own set of rules, and when I was sold to house Tellari I had to learn their rules, at least the ones that applied to me. Do you have - I don't know what words to use to ask about governmental structures, but - everyone just listens to the king, or is it more complicated than that?"

....he needs a ton of those words clarified! Eventually - " - so, we had one King and everyone listened to him, but after he was killed, there was a dispute over which of his children should be the next King. It was decided eventually in favor of -" he makes a slight face - "Nolofinwë, but we were loyalists of the house of Fëanor and we answer to them first - it mostly doesn't matter, the King wouldn't give orders that he wouldn't expect Lord Maedhros to agree with and Lord Maedhros wouldn't give orders that he couldn't get the King to support."

She is delighted to clarify words, and is delighted to receive clarification on who exactly everyone answers to. She isn't consciously aware of it, but she's smiling much more than she was yesterday, and in fact is smiling much more than she has in a long time. People generally don't give her political explanations of any depth - Liars don't know enough and Alteri don't care enough, as long as she knows which particular Alteri she's supposed to listen to when they give contradictory orders. This happens with uncomfortable regularity and is always terrifying.

She wants to know about Nolofinwë and Lord Maedhros and why this group is loyal to the house of Fëanor.

The King had three sons; Fëanáro was the eldest, and a genius who invented computers and lightleapers and all kinds of other things, and he didn't have much of a personal taste for ruling others but his eldest son, Lord Maedhros, was very gifted with it - generous with his time, thoughtful about what he asked of people. The plan was for the King to hand the crown to Fëanáro and for Fëanáro to hand it on soon enough. 

But once Melkor was released he knew that the Noldor, united, could destroy him, so he sought to sow discord. He planted evidence that Fëanáro was plotting against Nolofinwë for Nolofinwë's loyalists to find, and planted evidence that Nolofinwë was plotting against Fëanáro for us to find. And then they did not trust each other and in truth started planning for a fight, should one be necessary, and then Melkor killed the King.

And there was - considerable confusion, for a long time, over who ruled the Noldor, and Fëanáro was killed during that time, and Lord Maedhros saw that, while the crown was rightly his, his people would suffer should he insist on it, and so he offered it to Nolofinwë and swore him fealty."

She is very sorry about the deaths of their former king and Fëanáro. She is delighted that a group of people who could almost be Liars have a political history this complex that features this many players with this much power, but she doesn't say that because it seems like it might be disrespectful. The delight itself is still coming through, though she occasionally makes an effort to look serious.

"What are lightleapers?"

"Lightleapers travel between the stars. The stars are very far apart and travel between them otherwise takes a long time."

"Oh, yeah, of course. I'm from Yahi. It's ten lightyears away from Earth, so when house Tellari reassigned me, it took us about ten years to get there. It's much faster traveling between stars in the network, but it takes a really long time to build the pathways, so the number of stars that people can easily travel between is limited. How fast do the lightleapers go?"

"It takes a lightleaper five days to reach a destination."

"Any destination? I guess that shouldn't be surprising if the gate can send people places instantaneously, but it's still way more powerful than what the Carthons and the Alteri otherwise have access to."

He nods seriously. "That's very good to know. Yes, any destination."

She is extremely happy to know things that are helpful.

"OK. Thank you for answering all of this, it's very considerate of you and I appreciate it a lot. I'd love to hear more about what your planet is like, but this is also a lot of information and I think maybe I should eat again at some point, if that's not a problem?"

"Of course not! I'll have them bring lunch in."

She has to make an effort to even try not to smile now. She mentally reminds herself that she doesn't know these people and there's no guarantee that they're going to keep treating her nicely after they've learned more from her. Still, she can't imagine any circumstances under which Alteri would treat her like this, and it's honestly hard to think of very many things the Noldor could do that would make them stop being preferable to house Tellari. Maybe they could torture her for an entire year before killing her, or something. It'd take creativity.

She is not entirely sure how to ask questions about daily life on their planet, since all of her experiences are filtered through the lens of slavery, and asking if the Noldor keep slaves seems like it might be rude. She's also not entirely sure she wants to know the answer just yet.

She considers the question while she eats.

The food is tasty. He names things and looks over the starcharts that came with her suit and asks her a few questions about how to interpret them.

She repeats the names and asks to review many of the words they went over yesterday, reflexively apologizing for forgetting the ones she thinks she should know already. She knows how to interpret star charts. She's not a pilot, but all spacers know the basics and can use star locations to determine their current orientation. 

"I can answer more questions right now if you want me to, but I'm not very good at focusing on one thing for a lot of hours at a time," she says apologetically, when she's done eating. She's pretty good at enduring a lot of mental exertion without having a meltdown - people who have meltdowns do not get to keep being spacers - but it does get harder for her to remember things. "It would be easiest if we could review vocabulary a little more and then - I don't want to be a problem, but maybe I could walk around somewhere for a while before we come back to this? I don't need to if, um, that would inconvenience anyone, but I think maybe I would maybe be a little better at thinking if I did?"

"Yes of course! You can explore the whole ship except for other peoples' rooms, and call me back whenever you're ready to continue. Are you sure you want to review more vocabulary first? Humans usually have a hard time learning languages, we weren't expecting you to have it within a week or anything..."

She ducks her head in embarrassment. "Thank you. For lots of things. I'm not very good at learning languages, but I would really like to be able to talk to other people, and I don't know how long I'm going to be here, and it'll go faster with frequent repetition. Ves thinks so, anyway, she says it's more important to practice frequently than to practice for a long time at once. But yeah. I'll take a walk first. That's probably best."

"All right! I can show you how to reach the courtyard from here."

She follows him to the courtyard. 

Pretty pretty pretty.

"Take as long as you need!"

She mills around awkwardly for a bit, then gives herself permission to take a real walk.

There were big plants on Yahi and there were real trees on Earth, but she's never seen this many plants together, not even on the surface of a planet. Spaceships have lush but cramped greenhouses, optimized for producing food and oxygen, not for being pleasant to wander around in. The ship she spent ten years on didn't have a common space like this, not even for the few Alteri crew members who didn't sleep through the majority of the voyage. They had one cramped space for the Alteri crew and two cramped rooms full of bunk beds for the Liars. There was more space once they got to Earth, despite the far more demanding work schedule, but there was nothing like this.

She paces. She thinks. It's so good to be able to think.

There's abstract artwork and the strangest tiny windchimes that you can only hear if you put your ear really, really close to them and lots of greenery and some rooms with labels she can't read on the doors and windows looking out on space. Endorë is visible from here. It looks a little like Earth - green and blue with white clouds over it. The northern pole is entirely shrouded in clouds.

She investigates the artwork and the tiny wind chimes. They are weird but delightful, because they are clearly here because people like them and not because they serve some incredibly important purpose. The thought of a people who make spaces that are supposed to be pleasant is a good one. People probably pay more attention to this sort of thing on planets. She got over not living on a planet a long time ago, but this place is making her miss it again, and she hasn't even actually been to their planet yet.

She stares out the window at Endorë for a while. It's weird and uncomfortable not having a sense of time - she feels very sure that there's something she's supposed to be doing, or that there will be very soon, but she has no idea what it is or when it's going to happen.

She thinks about greeting some of the elves, but she's pretty sure she's going to get the pronunciation wrong, so she doesn't. Spending this much time doing nothing in particular is weird, so after about half an hour of wandering and ten or so minutes of forcing herself to try to decompress more completely, she heads back and looks for Ettelië.

They don't seem particularly interested in hiding that they're watching her; he shows up shortly after she starts looking. "Hello!"

She's OK with being watched. She'd watch them, if one of them showed up on her doorstep. Not that she has a doorstep, and if they showed up in Earth space then she probably wouldn't have been allowed to meet them in the first place, but - whatever, that's not the point.

"Hello! I'd like to try working on language again? And also - I don't need this at all so if it's a problem then don't worry about it, but I think maybe it'd be nice to have a clock? Maybe?"

She tries to smile instead of wincing this time, and sort of almost succeeds.

"Oh! I don't actually know if we have anything that would suit aboard the ship but that makes perfect sense and I will ask someone to look into it. Elves have computers in our heads, we use those."

"Thanks! It's, um, not urgent or anything." She pauses. "Do the computers do other things?"

"They do! They let us look at the world through each others' eyes if we choose to share. We like to look at pretty things and then show that to everyone within range. Right now only people on the ship are in range, it's more useful on a planet's surface. They let us remember things very well, and remember some things like words nearly perfectly. If we die they can be used to bring us back and if we are captured they can be used to hurt us very badly."

Her eyes widen at the beginning and the end of this explanation. Choose, they said, they're not psyons, it's not the same thing. Probably. Even if it were, they obviously can't use it on her. And immortality, hey, that sounds - sort of fake but very cool but it's probably fake and she can think about this later.

"We have computers," she says quietly. "But I think they only do that last thing."

"That sounds - uh, useless."

"Well it's not great for me," she agrees. "We, uh, didn't install them ourselves. It's easier for the Alteri to control people when they can immobilize or kill them at will."

"They're installed? Can they be removed?"

She shrugs helplessly. "Maybe? Sometimes they malfunction, so every now and then they put people to sleep for a while so they can open them up and do maintenance, but... they're installed in childhood, and if someone got it wrong the person would probably die or be paralyzed forever, so it's - it would be a risk." She bites her lip. "Do you, uh, think you might be able to figure out how to remove them?"

"I would expect so. Ours can't be removed, our brains run off them, it'd kill us, but if yours are installed in childhood then it seems likely it'd be possible to remove - or ruin in place - I'm not an expert but I'd certainly want to ask one and they might have some idea of how to do it."

"That would be nice," she says quietly. "That would be really nice. Um, do you have any idea - it's not urgent or anything, I don't think anyone can control the implants without access to Alteri technology, but - can you, um, maybe estimate how long it might be before you could maybe ask someone about it?"

"I can ask now. They might need to see you to have an informed guess, though."

She nods. "I would really appreciate that. If it's, um, not a bother or anything."

"It sounds like an important thing to know if we're going to make contact with the Alteri. And - some people think our computers aren't even worth it, given the risks, so I can't imagine having that risk and none of the advantages."

"Yeah, it's probably good to know," she agrees. "They're installed in all of the Alteri's Liars, but they're not installed in most of the Liars on Earth, because the Alteri don't have access to them. It's a big consideration - it's not like we never try to oppose the Alteri, but knowing that you can be instantly paralyzed or killed before you get the chance to do anything does sort of put a damper on the spirit of defiance." She winces. "If it's, um, possible and not a problem, I would prefer it if you could maybe try to disable the implant before you made contact with them? Because I - I understand why you'd want to make contact with them, but if you do and I'm in range of their sensors and the implant is active, then - I don't know exactly what the limitations are because they specifically try not to tell us, but they will probably notice and I will probably die."

She forces a smile at the end of this speech, because it seems like probably the only facial expression that can contain the other, less pleasant expressions that she might otherwise make.

"If we make contact with them and we can't remove your computer safely, is leaving you on Endorë likely to be sufficiently far away?"

She nods. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure that'd be enough."

"Then we'll make sure to do that before contact with them. Even if we do fix the computer. They sound very evil."

She pauses. "They're not.... I think there are probably some of them who aren't evil. But they're - yes. Most of them are - they're kind of evil."

She swallows and half-seriously waits for the implant to do something. It doesn't. She shakes off the irrational worry as best she can.

"Thank you. It's really - thank you." She pauses. "I'm sorry for not bringing this up earlier but it didn't really come up and since we're talking now about things you should know before you meet them you should probably know that they can also read people's minds sometimes. Or, um, not the Alteri themselves, but they have Liars who're - modified? I don't know what they did to them exactly but supposedly they can read people's minds."

He nods solemnly. "That is good to know, thank you. Those are also slaves?"

"Yes. They're - Mathrael says it's important to remember that they're not any more in control of the situation that we are, if the Alteri didn't like what they were doing then they could torture them, too. And most of them are all right. The one we have on the support ship is nice. She's, like - fourteen, I think? But we never know what she's going to tell them, so the fact that she's around makes things harder."

He nods. "No one here can read your mind, and we choose what to share with one another."

"Thank you." She is not entirely completely certain that he's telling the truth, but it's hard to ever be sure of things like that, so where she's at is probably close enough.

"So! Um. There are probably other things that I should tell you before you make contact that are not immediately occurring to me, but if we're not incredibly pressed for time then maybe - maybe you could ask someone about the implant and then we could practice vocabulary again?"

"I passed on the message already, they'll convey it when we next communicate with our base on Endorë. And I'd love to practice vocabulary again!"

"OK!" 

They practice vocabulary. Imrainai works just as hard as before, but manages to make fewer reflexive apologies this time around. 

He seems really pleased with her progress! They get to words for family and he asks if her family is back with the Alteri.

She nods. She tries to describe her relationships without changing languages, but she wants to explain the entire situation, so after giving it her best shot with the words she has - "I had parents, I had brothers, I had a sister, I have my sister's son, I have my sister's daughter" - she sighs and returns to Etra La. 

"My parents and most of my siblings were still on Yahi living under House Kendari last time I saw them, but that was ten - probably eleven years ago? My sister came with us, but she was killed for insubordination before we got to earth. I've been taking care of one of her sons and her youngest daughter since I was about fifteen. They're in Earth space right now. They're probably really worried about me, but the rest of my work crew will be trying to take care of them now that I've gone missing. I... miss them, but the important thing is that someone is looking after them." She smiles weakly. "What about you, do you have family on Endorë?"

"I had a brother, but he was killed in the war, as were my parents. My grandparents are safe in Valinor." 

She nods. She doesn't know if the situations are really comparable, or if their lives are in any way really comparable, but it sounds like it would be painful.

"I'm sorry," she says. "It's hard to lose people."

"It is. War is terrible and I hope that all the wars will soon be ended."

She nods decisively, then asks to go on with the vocabulary lesson. She really wants to be able to talk to people. Eventually her brain starts feeling really full, and she has to admit that she's probably not going to make much more progress this session.

"All right! There's a concert tonight, if you'd like to attend."

"A concert? I - don't think I exactly know what that is?"

"Lots of people get together to listen to other people sing."

"Oh! That sounds nice, yeah. I would like to attend, definitely."

"Oh good!! It will be lovely. I know the singers and they are very talented."

She's very excited! For a while she almost forgets about the fact that house Tellari will totally try to recapture or kill her immediately if they manage to follow her through the gate. 

She asks to take a nap in the middle of the day (because she's not sure how much sleep she got, but she's pretty sure it wasn't the amount she was supposed to get), asks if they can have another vocabulary lesson afterwards, and delightedly looks forward to the concert.

The concert is in the courtyard; this seems to be so that everyone can listen from their balconies. It is a bit of a mystery what he would have suggested if she'd said she didn't want to attend the concert. There are fourteen Elves singing. 

They are really good at singing.

They are so good at singing.

She has mostly heard people sing in situations where other people really needed to be comforted - a baby needs to sleep and doesn't know how, a child has a toothache and the doctor is occupied, a person has been flogged or had their implant activated for no good reason, someone has been killed.

This is not one of those times. She's really happy. She's also really relieved to hear the singing. Somehow it makes everything hurt a little less, even when she's not willing to admit that anything hurts in the first place.

She is not crying, not even a little bit, that would be dumb.

Since it is an Elf concert, it goes on and on and on. Eventually Ettelië comes to tell her that the concert will probably go all night but humans usually prefer shorter concerts and need sleep and he can show her how to seal her room if she'd like.

She deliberates about this for longer than is strictly necessary, but eventually she admits that it would be irresponsible not to sleep, and accepts help in sealing her room.

She sleeps in the bed this time.

The concert is in fact still going when she wakes!

She resumes listening to it! Probably the novelty is going to wear off eventually, and it's not like she can sit in one place forever, but since she can listen from her balcony there's nothing to stop her from pacing the room at the same time.

This is such a good ship.

They wrap up about an hour after she wakes, and someone brings her breakfast. "The doctors in Endorë would like to get some scans of your chip so they can evaluate how to destroy or remove it," the Elf bringing breakfast says.

"OK. That sounds like a good idea. Thank you for telling me."

They are not going to put her under and then put a different chip in that they can control, she tells herself, that's an absurd worry. This is something she specifically asked for, and also if they wanted to put a different chip in her head they would definitely not have to bother with any sort of pretext.

She eats breakfast.

Ettelië comes over after breakfast. "How are you doing?"

"Better! I've only cried once in the past twenty-four hours! And that was mostly because of the concert, which was - well, what you said it would be. It was lovely."

"I'm glad you liked it! So they want to do a brain scan to get imaging of where the chip is. We have a machine in the ship for that. It's loud and you shouldn't wear anything metal in it but the chip is fine, we build them to be safe for that."

"OK! I don't think I have any metal in my clothes." Pause. "I don't think I have any other clothes, either. But that's less pressing."

"The ship has extras of our uniforms and our off-hours uniforms but that's all, I'm sorry."

"It's totally fine. I am happy to focus on making it marginally more difficult for house Tellari to immediately torture or kill me."

She smiles. It is not insincere.

"If we make contact with them I think Lord Curufin and Lord Maedhros are discussing contact under conditions that would convince them they should not anger or annoy us."

Oh wow, Lord Maedhros from the story is involved. That kind of makes sense. Probably contact with a new set of spacefaring aliens is the sort of thing you'd want to talk over with people who have the authority to make really significant decisions. 

"That sounds like a good idea. They're not impossible to deal with as long as they don't have an overwhelming military advantage."

"And believe themselves to have one," he agrees cheerfully. "When do you want to do the scans?"

"Right now is fine! I don't have anything else I need to be doing." Smile. "I think this might be the first time in my life that I haven't had my schedule dictated down to the minute."

"The Alteri sound very cruel." He'll walk her to the ship hospital.

She feels so vindicated every time he confirms that the Alteri are terrible. She was pretty sure they were. She wasn't a hundred percent sure.

She cheerfully follows him to the hospital.

And they have a large noisy machine they want her to lie down in. It's pretty. Of course.

She lies down in the noisy machine, managing to keep her apprehension to manageable levels. It helps that it's pretty.

"All right," says an Elf cheerily a minute later. "All done, all done, go take a walk, it's all right."

She breathes deeply and thanks the Elf. 

She takes a walk. The courtyard continues to be excellent.

"I know it's small," says Ettelië apologetically, catching up with her. 

"The chip? Is that a problem?"

"No, sorry, I meant the courtyard."

She laughs, without meaning to. "We don't have common spaces like this on our ships. We have meeting rooms for Alteri use, tiny greenhouses that a few children can hide in at once, cafeterias with too many tables, and rooms full of bunk beds that everyone shares. The courtyard is wonderful."

"Elves need a lot of space. It's a problem because even if we find somewhere to evacuate Endorë to we don't really have the capacity to get them there."

"That does sound hard. I guess - this place is really nice, I wish our ships were more like this, but it would be inconvenient if we needed to make all of them this size. Maybe just the ones people are going to be living in for extended periods of time."

"It would be good if Elves could make it five days in a small space. How large are Alteri ships?"

"Depends on the ship. We have little shuttles for moving around planetary systems, those are only big enough for a few bodies to fit inside. The long-term ones in systems are much larger, because they have more people living on them and see more use. The one I spent ten years on was medium-sized - maybe a hundred by two hundred meters, with a couple hundred Liars awake inside? Though it wasn't all for us."

She indicates a subsection of the courtyard for a visual approximation.

"Do you have any thoughts about what they might think when they see our ships?"

"I'm not sure. I've only seen this one. It's big, but that's not everything. Carthon ships are usually smaller than Alteri ones because they don't keep slaves with them and don't need to move around very much, but that doesn't mean their weapons are any less dangerous if they decide to fight."

"Do the Carthons keep slaves at all?"

She bites her lip. "I... don't really know, exactly. They try their best to conquer other peoples and tell them what to do, same as the Alteri, but I've never lived under Carthon rule. I've only even seen them a couple times, and only since we arrived in Earth space. I've heard about Alteri colonies being lost to them, but when that happens the Alteri tend to destroy their resources and then kill everyone who can't evacuate the colony. I'm sure someone must have been taken over by Carthons before they could complete the process, but I'm not sure what would have happened to them." She frowns. "There're free Liars on Earth, so maybe the Carthons are backing that? I must have heard something about it at some point, I just - they don't let us have access to news or anything, it's all word of mouth."

He nods. "What's the story with Earth?"

"So it's - there are all sorts of different takes on how it happened, but what we know is that about twelve years ago, the Alteri and the Carthons both suddenly became aware that there was a planet full of Liars who'd never even heard of the Carthons or the Alteri before, with no long-range space flight or any other really advanced technology, with the exception of the broken gate in space. They knew the planet was there, so it should've been impossible for them to miss the people on it, but somehow - I don't know, I guess either there was a technical error or someone was hiding it somehow. Mathrael says the gate is ancient Liar technology, and she probably knows a lot of things I don't, but - it sounds implausible, you know?

Nobody was positioned for a decisive victory in the system - there was an Alteri mining base full of people who nobody wanted to deal with, and some kind of Carthon research ship in the vicinity, but nobody you'd send to take over a planet. They could've destroyed it to keep it from falling into enemy hands - a lot of Alteri think that's what should've happened, I guess - but it was a huge discovery and a really valuable potential colony full of several billion valuable potential slaves, and somehow the parties involved agreed to both maintain a presence in the system until they had a better idea of who was positioned to take it. So they've just been staring at each other like that for the past decade, I guess. We were one of the first Alteri ships to reach the system. I assume the current plan is to figure out if the gate can be used for two-way travel, and then flood the system with warships if it is."

"And you don't know what the other side intends to do with it, if they're there first?"

"The Carthons? No idea, sorry. It's hard enough to keep track of what the Alteri are doing. We try to listen, but it's not like we have a lot of spare time to eavesdrop."

"Is the native civilization aware of any of this?"

"Yep! For twelve years now. I guess it's been pretty disruptive, but they looked like they were doing better than us when I saw them. I've only been to Earth itself a couple times, though, I have no idea what it was like before."

"What did you go there for?"

"House Tellari just figured it would pay to have someone establish power in the system before the fighting breaks out, I think - whoever's in control when the ceasefire ends is going to get the specific credit or blame for the situation, and Alteri are very big on getting credit for things. Rakan Tellari bought a ship and applied for control of a couple hundred of the house's slaves, and he got it, so he went. We didn't find out about the gate until we were already in the system." 

"What were you doing on Earth with a hundred people?"

"Fixing the gate, in practice. Pretty sure the original idea was to build warships there, but they prioritized the gate once they knew about it."

"No, I mean on the planet itself."

"Oh." She ducks her head. "So uh, Alteri have some buildings on Earth, all the houses in Earth space are trying to maintain a presence there. Tellari only has the people they brought with them, who're practically all spacers. Most of them are born spacers, so they can't do a lot of hard work planetside. The gravity's too hard on them. But I was born Yahi, and I'm not one of the best spacers, so when they needed some people to clean offices or move boxes or install cameras around their warehouses, they figured I'd be fine at it. They were not particularly happy with my performance, so they sent me back to space after a while."

"...and the people on Earth tolerate the aliens who want to conquer them having office space there?"

Frown. "...evidently? I don't, uh, speak any Earth languages. I don't really know how they're spinning it."

"Hmmm. Do the Carthons know of this gate?"

She looks like she's about to say something, and then frowns again. "I... don't think I actually know that, either."

This is unsettling. Being unsettled earlier would not have helped anything whatsoever, but she still wishes she'd picked up on it. She wishes she knew more things in general, it kind of seems like that might be super important now.

"Don't worry about it. We want to go in with as much information as we can, but we aren't expecting you to know everything or to be right about everything you have been told."

She nods. "I'm sorry. I'd tell you if I knew, I just - they've been keeping us up on the ships for so long, and they don't really stop to have in-depth conversations about politics with us."

" - slaves of evil empires aren't usually useful information sources, you know, it's not that you did badly at something -"

She nods. "...yeah. I guess not. I hope it's, um, something to go on."

"I think so. Would you like a hug."

She nods much more enthusiastically. "I didn't want to ask 'cause I didn't want to be weird or annoying and I don't know how much you all hug people here but if you don't mind then - yeah - " 

Hug.

She hugs him back. When she pulls away she's wiping tears out of her eyes.

"Thank you. That - that helped."

"Of course. I think possibly you should be less reluctant to ask for things that will help you."

"Possibly," she agrees, smiling weakly. "I don't have a lot of practice at it, and when I first got here I really didn't want you to think I was going to be a problem, so I don't think it'll come naturally. But I'll try."

Hopefully this doesn't end with her simultaneously feeling guilty about asking for things and for not asking for things. At least she's aware that this is a likely failure mode.

"If you were a problem we'd probably disable the chip and then send you down to the human settlements on Endorë, instead of having you decide whether you'd rather do that or stay here. It wouldn't be a very big deal."

"Not having any chance to try to help my niece and nephew and everyone I've ever met would be upsetting, but having to live on Endorë is admittedly several steps up from day one theories about my fate. Those were mostly centered around ways to avoid being killed."

She ducks her head, but she's smiling - this was a perfectly reasonable thing to be worried about at the time, so there's a limit to how embarrassed about it she can feel.

"Of course they were! If you'd been found by the Enemy it would have been an entirely justified concern, and it was just luck we found you first."

"Well. I'm glad to have finally had some luck. It's made much more of a difference than I expected it to. Vocabulary lesson?"

"Good idea!"

And so they practice. Learning languages without being an Elf is painfully slow, but she continues to try her best. She's not sure what's going to happen when the ship's crew returns to Endorë, and she wants to be able to communicate at least basic information before anything happens that might necessitate not spending most of her time glued to Ettelië.

The ship takes its time. 

(They are debating whether she is a trick of the Enemy).

Ettelië is delighted to continue to provide vocabulary help. "And the Lord Curufin is interested in learning the other languages you know, if that's possible."

She is immediately excited at the thought that she might have more useful information to share.

"OK! I know three languages. The one we've been using is Etra La, the common language that spacer Liars share. Spacers change planets a lot and have to be able to communicate with each other. Then I know the dominant language on Yahi - it's my first language, it's the language my name comes from, but it's also the least likely to be strategically useful to you. And then I know Confederate One, which is the most widely-used Alteri language. You can't speak it aloud, the Alteri use lights. Liars have hand signs, each finger corresponds to one of the lights. It takes a little bit to get used to, but it's really structurally similar to Etra La - Etra La used to be a phonetic cipher of Confederate One, but that was a long time ago and they've diverged a lot since then."

She spreads her hands out in front of her and demonstrates the method of bending one's fingers to represent the blinking of a particular light.

"Huh. Do you mind if I also set up the computers to learn the light patterns?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea! I can read the light patterns just fine, but it'll take a little longer for me to produce them for you. I can do it, though, it's the same language no matter how you're signing it."

They get a tablet set up that can flash light patterns in Confederate One - "is there a Confederate Two? Do your people prefer numbers to words for names, generally?"

"Hm?" She frowns at the Alteri being described as her people, but she doesn't comment on it. "Oh, the languages had names, but the Alteri government gave them numbers when they standardized them. There are six in standard use. There are also some other numbered ones that aren't officially recognized. Liars don't have any numbered languages, really."

"Your name was a series of numbers, was it not?"

She stares blankly at him for a few moments before she realizes what he's talking about. She feels somewhat nauseous. She puts a hand to her mouth for a second, half to control that reaction and half to hide the fact that her face has probably gone redder than it's supposed to be. 

"So, uh, when I got here I thought this was an Alteri ship, you know? And uh, I figured - I figured the Alteri would want my identification number, and I thought it was weird because your name didn't sound like it was long enough to be a string of digits, but there was no way the Alteri would want my name, so I gave you the number and then I guess I sort of forgot to mention that it was - not really exactly a name?"

" - oh. You poor dear."

"My name is Imrainai," she says quietly.

"Would you rather we call you that?"

"Yes. I would like that."

"All right. I'm sorry. I should have asked sooner."

"It's not your fault. I forgot. There's no way you could know what alien naming customs are like." 

She still feels sort of nauseous, but she does feel better knowing that her friend does, in fact, know her name now. This seems like a good thing for a friend to know.

It does! "Do you want to go for another walk?"

"Yes, please."

They've changed the courtyard up; the plants are in different places and differently lit and the rocks have been recolored and the sculptures replaced.

Oooh. She investigates the sculptures. She's still not very good at talking, but she's confident enough now to at least say hello to some of the other Elves in the courtyard.

"Hello! How are you liking everything?"

"I like it here! It is very pretty."

She bites her lip and hopes she didn't mangle the grammar.

Well, they seem impressed.

She is delighted. She can think of precious little else she knows how to say, but she's delighted nonetheless. She goes off to find Ettelië and ask him which words she should be focusing on if she wants to be able to talk to more people.

"Most of them should have a pretty good grasp of your language, I've been putting all my notes on the public computers."

"Oh, really? That's convenient. I mean, I still really want to learn your language so I can talk to people on Endorë, but that's good, too. How many languages do you know, exactly?"

"All of the ones in our world, but that isn't very many - there's Quenya, which people from Valinor speak, and Thindarin and Nandorin and Avarin, which Elves on Endorë speak, Taliska and Sechwar, the human languages, and the common Dwarven trading language. And I've never actually had occasion to speak orcish but I understand it."

"That's a lot! Not as many as they have on Earth, supposedly Earth has hundreds of them, but still. Though I guess it's easier when you can pick them up in a few days. My niece knows a lot of languages - not that many, I don't think, but close. She's really good at learning them, it's a little unfair." She smiles. "I hope she's doing OK right now."

"If we make contact with the Alteri we'll do everything we can to get them here safely."

"Thank you. That would mean a lot to me."

"Would you like lunch now?'

She deliberates for a moment, then shakes her head. Her stomach is still not super happy with her. "No, I'm good for now. Thanks."

"Would you like me to sing you something?"

She has never been offered singing as a substitute for food before, but - OK. Sure. 

"Yeah. If you'd like to."

He would like to sing! He sings. 

She listens. More people should sing in more situations. She has had no practice and is not going to be one of them, but it's true in principle.

When an Elf starts singing other Elves will randomly join in with the harmony. It's kind of bizarre. They must all know all the same songs. He sings for a human-appropriate length of time, like twenty minutes.

Elves are so cool. Maybe someday she'll be able to do something cool. Nothing immediately comes to mind, but something, someday, if she manages to live through the next stage of alien contact.

She thanks them for singing and then asks to continue with language-learning. Her concentration isn't great today; she keeps feeling like she's missing things she's supposed to already know.

"Is the ship too small," asks Ettelië worriedly. "Not all Elves can do this, we pick crews from ones who are unusually able to handle it - you might just need more space -"

She ducks her head and doesn't make eye contact. "I've spent my whole life in smaller spaces, promise. It's just harder to focus some days than others. I think I might turn in early tonight, though, if that's OK?"

"Of course!"

She smiles and returns to her room. She doesn't sleep.

She sits on her bed and stares straight ahead for hours, counting back days on her fingers. Not because she thinks anything is wrong, that would be stupid, there are plenty of reasons to be nauseous and tired and not want to eat delicious Elf food even when you're hungry. Nothing's been done to her recently. She's pretty sure something has to be done to you for the explanation she's thinking of to be the right one. 

She counts back on her fingers once, twice, three times. Twenty-four days with the elves, fifty-three days since the last time she was knocked out for chip maintenance. Missing one period would be stress or happenstance; she's missed two. But there could be two instances of stress or happenstance in a row, it happens, it's not impossible. 

She hugs her knees and lies to herself about whether she's crying.

"It's that star system."

      "How confident are we in that?"

"Nearly certain. It's also not very costly to be wrong - if we send a ship there and it's some other system, we can just come right back- -"

      "Yes, all right. And it's got three sets of aliens, two with near-totally unknown capabilities, one with capabilities we know to exceed ours and mindreaders."

"I'm not worried about the mindreaders," says Lord Maedhros. 

     "....no? I'm worried about the mindreaders."

"We'll send people who have the beliefs that we would like the Alteri to read off them. I'm not worried about the mindreaders."

     "All right."

"I am worried they'll be able to reverse-engineer a lightleaper from a captured one without our cooperation." 

     "Not - impossible but very nearly impossible and would take a very long time, during which we'd be positioned to make it substantially more difficult. It is an argument for contact at Earth rather than at some other alien-controlled star system with which they have more regular travel and communications."

"Yes, I want to go to Earth. Fewer variables, more reason to ally with us, easier to handle if they choose instead to make a mistake."

She waits until she thinks it might be very early morning, then leaves her room to go find Ettelië. She is not sure in what direction she's being stupid, but she's definitely been stupid at some point, and since she's not going to be able to focus until she knows for sure which point it was, she might as well get it over with.

Ettelië materializes predictably quickly. He looks like he might have hurriedly gotten out of bed. "Imrainai!"

"Hello," she says, momentarily warmed by the use of her name. It's not enough to get her to actually stop looking worried, but it's something. "I'm - I'm sorry if this is an inconvenient time to ask for things, or if you had to get out of bed, I should have thought more about that, but uh - you said to ask for things that would be helpful."

"Yes, of course. - I'm supposed to help you find your way around here, it's not inconvenient, it's my job."

"OK," she says. "You're - you're really good at it and I hope I'm not making it harder than it has to be." She looks down at the ground and clasps her hands in front of her. She pauses.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, just say the thing, this isn't hard.

"It's probably nothing and I'm probably imagining things but I need to ask if - do you possibly have a way of testing whether someone is going to have a baby."

"Uh. Aside from - asking them?"

This is.... not the reaction she was expecting. She is momentarily too confused to sink into the ground in mortification.

"No, I mean, like, if they don't know yet themselves?"

- Ettelië is visibly so confused. "You can't have a baby without knowing it. ...can humans have a baby without knowing it? ...humans can - that's horrifying. Ah. Uh."

She stares at the ground. "I didn't - they don't let us decide but they usually tell us - I don't know but I think they might have - I'm sorry, I'd have told someone sooner if I knew but I don't - "

"...do you know who the baby's father is?"

Headshake. "They don't let us decide that either, they - artificial insemination is standard practice but they're supposed to tell us - I didn't do anything, I didn't even know they'd done something, if they did it was when I was knocked out for chip maintenance - I don't even know if there is a baby I just think there might be - "

She's trying very hard not to cry now.

Hug?

Hug. She needs a hug so much right now. She hears herself apologizing but isn't entirely sure what she's apologizing for.

Ettelië scoops her up and sits down and pats her and sings quietly.

She cries for a while. Eventually she's quiet. 

"Who would know who the baby's father is? Would the Alteri be able to answer that?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't know how closely they even keep track. I suppose they must keep track. I don't know if I've ever even met whoever it is."

Squeeze. "Elves need to be with their husband while they are expecting a baby, in order for them and the baby to be safe. I don't know anything about humans..."

"You can get by without someone else during pregnancy if you have to. My sister did when she was carrying my niece. But - you don't want to raise a child all by yourself, not a baby, that's so much to do on your own, you need someone to help."

"If the father is alive it ought to be him, it's a terrible thing to have a child of your own in the world and no idea, and to miss their childhood..."

"I suppose," she says. "The different houses do it differently, some of them do forced marriages and some of them do artificial insemination and let you pick who you raise the child with. I thought - I thought they'd tell me when I had to find someone. I don't know why they wouldn't tell me."

"I am so very sorry. What an appallingly evil and cruel thing to do."

She nods. It doesn't change the situation, but it's not something she would have heard back in Earth space. It is difficult, it is painful, yes. But it means a lot to hear someone say that it's wrong, too.

She doesn't have anything to add to that, so she hugs him again. Hugs are good for making things marginally less awful.

"What do humans need to safely carry a baby -"

"I haven't done it before. Um, I think - good nutrition, that's important. You're supposed to have access to prenatal care, but I don't know what that means. You need - I don't know, when I was with my sister it wasn't her first time and there were other women there to help. The dangerous part is giving birth. If you don't have access to proper healthcare and there's too much blood loss or an infection, then you can die."

" - probably the people who deal with the humans on Endorë have experience with this and we should just accelerate getting cleared to go there."

She nods, then frowns. "What do you need to do before you can go back?"

"I don't think we need to do anything in particular, it's just that the schedules aren't up to us."

"Oh. Of course, yeah, that makes sense, you'd need to coordinate things." She wipes her eyes. "I feel like I should be doing something."

"Resting? Eating well?"

"I was thinking something more ambitious, but that's probably a good start," she admits. "I couldn't sleep. I should try sleeping. Sorry for waking you."

"It's not a problem. Resting and eating well are really important, even when someone has done something awful to you and all you want is to go dismantle their civilization entirely."

She laughs. It is straightforwardly true and probably not intended as a joke, but her emotions are fragile and unstable right now and it sounds almost like something that Mathrael might say. 

"OK. That sounds like a good plan. I'm gonna sleep, but let's come back to that second thing when I wake up."

"All right. Good night."

She sleeps until the middle of the day this time, partly because she's really tired and partly because she can. Eventually she wakes up, cleans herself off, and stares at the ceiling for a while trying to summon something in the neighborhood of resolution.

The Noldor stopped listening to the aliens that had been telling them what to do. She has no idea whether the same thing is possible for the Liars, but if it isn't, she doesn't want it to be because they were too scared to try when the opportunity presented itself.

Eventually she sighs and leaves her room again.

The Elf ship is still making its slow way around the planet. It doesn't seem to be close to landing. There are Elves playing musical instruments in the courtyard.

She had better start getting to work on making friends with some of the non-Ettelië Elves. She should probably have gotten to work on this sooner, given that she's really pretty lonely and Elves currently make up one hundred percent of her social circle, but now she has a motivation that's obviously way more important than her social incompetence. She's pretty sure that most of her potential civilization-dismantling resources are dependent on being friends with Elves. 

She greets them and does her best to compliment the music in Quenya.

"Awwww, thank you," someone says, and then corrects her pronunciation. "Do you play?"

She shakes her head and tries to formulate a reply in Quenya, but decides she's probably better off speaking a language she actually knows. It would probably be pretty hard to get to know her if her vocabulary were limited to a couple hundred words.

"No, I've never had the chance to learn," she says apologetically.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

"Great! Which one?" 

She points to a stringed instrument she doesn't know the name of. "I'm not sure which ones are easiest to learn, but I really like the sound of this one...?"

The owner of that one would be delighted to give her a lesson in it. It's really complicated. 

She thanks the owner of the instrument and gives it her best shot. Her best shot is not very good. Hopefully they're not expecting her to figure it out right away?

They cheerfully assure her it takes decades, and correct a few things that she could work on right now.

She's pretty sure she doesn't have decades, but as long as they're not expecting her to get it in an afternoon, that's probably fine. It's honestly sort of nice to be allowed to suck at something.

She does her best to follow their advice.

Elves are so delighted to teach her music! Ettelië comes in after a while and quietly watches the lessons from the back of the courtyard.

She is delighted to be taught! Also delighted that Elves are apparently not hard to delight. Operation Make Friends With Elves would be so much harder if they went around expecting other people to live up to the standard of coolness they set. 

She smiles at Ettelië, but continues practicing until she thinks her concentration is starting to slip. She also makes as much conversation as she can, asking people how and when they learned to play their various instruments.

In Valinor, mostly. "There was more time for things like that back then. And more materials."

She nods. She is far too familiar with time and material constraints. 

"There are some people who make music where I come from, but it's hard. We're not officially allowed to own things, and we mostly don't have access to the materials we'd need to make instruments. But there are improvised ones, sometimes. And some people sing. Uh, I don't sing, really, but some people do."

"Singing is really important!"

"There are still artisans that make instruments, they're just fewer."

"I can't wait until the war is over."

She agrees that singing is important, and she hopes that the war ends soon. (She probably doesn't think singing is as important as the Elves do, and she really doesn't know very much about the war or how it's going, but she doesn't feel like those are necessary additions.)

She thanks them for the lesson again and goes to check in with Ettelië.

"Imrainai! Are you feeling better?"

"Less terrible," she says, smiling. "Have you heard anything about how much longer we're going to stay in orbit?"

"If everyone's healthy it may be a few months still. I'm sorry."

"It's fine! Just curious. And wondering what I should be doing, I guess. I've never gone this long before without, like, working on things."

"Is it going to be a difficult adjustment having a baby?"

"Maybe. It can't be that much harder than raising Ves, once they're, uh, external, but I suppose there were other people around when Ves was small. I mean, there are other people around here, but..."

"We can definitely try to get you to Endorë by the time the baby is born if you think it'll be healthier for the baby to have other humans around."

"It's definitely good to have people around, though I don't know how much it matters whether the people are Elves or humans. It's just that the work crews are really - you know for sure that the people you work with are going to make sure the rest of their crew is getting what they need, insofar as that's possible. I'm not sure how much harder raising a baby is without that kind of... communal responsibility, or something. But I'm sure we'll manage."

"Elves do that. I don't know if the humans on Endorë do that but - I'd expect so? It does seem the obviously right way to do it. Elves would be happy to have a baby around, it's just that if you think humans would be better we can arrange that too."

"That's good, then," she says, smiling. "I should probably at least meet some of the humans on Endorë, at some point. Where I end up staying is probably mostly a question of where I can be most useful. There are plenty of other babies in Earth space, and I doubt their fates are objectively less important than this one's."

"Well, while you have a baby you needn't do anything else, a baby is more than enough."

"I don't think it's really a question of that? It's important to do whatever good I'm in a position to do, whatever I think the expectations for myself should be. If taking care of a baby takes a hundred percent of my time and energy, then OK, I'm not going to neglect the baby, but whatever baby doesn't need should go back to helping everyone else. Anyone else would've done the same for me, if they'd gone through the portal and I'd been left behind."

"That is very good. I think babies benefit from their parents not being torn between many things that need doing, so it's good for people who aren't parenting babies to step in so the parents aren't torn in that way."

"I think that's true. If thirty Liars had been pulled through the gate, we'd be having a very different conversation. But there aren't thirty of us here, so I think a lot of things depend on whether I'm at all needed after contact, if and when that happens. It's possible that you'll be so good at handling the Alteri that I couldn't possibly do anything to help, and in that case I will absolutely feel comfortable focusing on this baby."

"Even if we need your help that just wouldn't be fair to the baby. We should get whatever we need before there's a baby counting on you."

"I am pretty sure there are at least billions of other people's fates hanging in the balance here. Baby will understand." She smiles. "Besides, it's not like you need me to fix ships or haul boxes. I can totally hold a baby and answer questions about the Alteri at the same time. I bet they'll just pick up more interesting vocabulary. Taking care of Ves wasn't completely debilitating, and Ves turned out... fine may not be the correct word, but if the baby turns out anything like Ves then I will not particularly consider myself to have failed them."

Ettelië frowns worriedly. "If you think that'll work, you'd know best."

"I promise I'll be doing my absolute best to make sure the baby gets everything they need," she says, trying her best to sound reassuring. "I don't think I'll need to abandon everyone else I know in order to do that."

"I don't think you'd be abandoning them but of course if you'll be happier doing things then it makes sense for you to do them."

"I don't really think my personal happiness is the most important consideration when weighed against the fates of billions of other people? I mean - not that I'm actually going to be able to help them, I have no idea if that's possible or not, but if I can, then I'd rather raise a child in a world where fewer than one hundred percent of their extended family members are dead or enslaved." Smile. "I really do appreciate that you're this adamant about the child receiving the level of care they need. I was prepared to argue that point if you weren't, and it means a lot that I don't have to. It's just that there are lots of other babies that aren't as lucky as this one is going to be, and their fates matter, too. So if I'm in a position to help them in a way that other people aren't, I think I have to consider that, too."

"There are things - lots of things - you should trade off against other peoples' lives. Even really important things like the risk of eternal torture or permanent destruction. But Elves do not conventionally see childhood as the kind of thing that ought to get traded that way."

"That seems like a good way to think. Not a bad way, anyway. I hope someday we get to the point where we don't have to weigh different people's childhoods against each other."

"If we need your advice on something I'll let people know they should feel free to ask it."

"Thank you. I appreciate it. And I really don't expect there to be any quality of life trades at all, if I'm even capable of helping in the first place. It's possible my help isn't worth much anyway, I just - I do want to help if I can. Anyway, uh, unless you think there are other things that need to be addressed right now, I guess it's probably important to keep up the language learning?"

"I think that Lord Maedhros probably has a whole list of questions but he hasn't sent them yet. He might want to ask them himself I suppose."

"He - oh?"

Yeah. Yes. Obviously. Obviously you would want the person making high-level military decisions to have the chance to ask questions of people who are particularly likely to have answers, it'd be weird if you didn't do that. She's like, strategically important or something. She was arguing that literally five seconds ago. Keep up, Imrainai.

"OK! Well, I am here to answer any questions I can."

"Is that all right? If not we can try to work something out."

"It's totally fine! I want to help. And it's not even a problem in the first place. I'm just, uh, not used to anyone remotely important wanting to talk to me, and sometimes I forget for a second that there are, like, reasons why someone might conceivably want to talk to me right now. But there are, so it's fine."

"He's also - uh. He is a computer so he can talk to many people at the same time."

"Oh." OK. Well. "That's convenient, then." Frown. "I kind of assumed he was an Elf?"

"He was an Elf. He, uh, died, and normally when that happens we destroy the chips so the Enemy can't have them but we needed him so they figured out how to run his."

"Oh. Well - good for him for helping people who needed him, then. Uh, do you always destroy the chips, or is that just because of the war? Or - you said you could bring people back, I think, but can you only bring them back as computers?"

"The Valar know how to bring them back in normal bodies. We don't yet but we know it can be done and we know what we'd have to learn and we'll learn after the war. Right now it's only as computers. We usually treasure and keep the chips until we can restore them, but the war made that a bad idea."

She nods. "That makes sense. I hope you can win the war soon. That sounds - really really hard."

This seems like kind of an understatement, but comforting people about death when the inevitability of death isn't a constant is sort of outside her experience.

"I hope that too. Very much."

"Yeah. Um, anything I should be doing right now, in particular...?"

"I don't think so. It really is important to take care of yourself."

"OK. Food and water and language lessons, then. Probably some exercise at some point."

"That sounds great."

She returns to their regularly scheduled language lessons for however long it takes something else to happen. She's still not super enthusiastic about food, but she tries her best to eat, and asks Ettelië if there are other options when she really can't bring herself to do that for a given dish. She still takes frequent walks, but now they include conversations with the other Elves on board - she learns names and bits of identifying information for as many people as she can, and does her best to be generally pleasant to everyone.

There's a part of her that still feels really happy, and a part of her that feels like she's coping. But she is coping. She's pretty good at managing at least that much.

A few language lessons later - "Lord Maedhros says that he does want to talk to you. When is a good time?"

"Any time, I guess? My schedule mostly consists of doing other things while I wait to be of any strategic importance."

She might possibly be feeling the sudden need to get up and pace and work off nervous energy, but she doesn't think that feeling is gonna go away, so now is probably legitimately as good a time as any other. Except strictly superior, because she's pretty sure moving quickly is a good thing.

"All right." He twiddles with the computer. "Just a minute, then."

She nods. And tries really hard to believe that she's, like, a competent person who's ever known anything in her entire life ever.

He has a face on the screen. It's not a perfectly convincing face - there's nothing obviously wrong but there's something wrong. 

His voice sounds normal. "Imrainai! Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. We're so glad that we had the fortune to find you."

This is sort of weird, but is probably less weird than talking to a computer without a face. She smiles. "I'm glad too! Uh, partly because not being found would probably have meant suffocating to death in space, but I'm also really glad if it gives me that chance to help you, or for you to help us."

OK, good, yes, that's only sort of a terrible conversation opener, she can do this.

"We would very much like to help your people. It sounds like they are being treated unconscionably."

"Thank you. I don't have an extensive reference class, but I'm sure the situation could be improved considerably from where it is, if we had more resources to work with."

"That's good to hear. What resources do you have in mind?"

"All Liars except the ones on Earth are currently ruled over by the Alteri. We couldn't begin to improve things for ourselves without a method of disabling our implants, which I've been told you're interested in researching. If that can be accomplished, we'll at least have the possibility of rebellion. If it came to a war - and I expect it would in most places, though perhaps some houses would negotiate, if they felt there were too many slaves in their area who were capable of hurting them - then of course we would benefit from military aid and from the chance to transport children and the elderly to an area that had some level of safety or stability. But I understand that that's a lot to ask of you when you're fighting a different war yourself. I think if there's a method of disabling the implants, though, we'll have a shot, even without additional aid. It's not as though the Alteri houses will do well fighting a war on two fronts, either. It'll be particularly valuable if there's any way to disable the implants at range, without additional surgical incisions. I'm not sure if that's possible, but it'd completely change the situation if it were."

Frick, she almost sounds like she knows what she's talking about. Helps that she's been thinking about this for weeks, but still. She should pretend to be competent more often.

"That makes sense. They can be activated remotely by the Alteri, correct?"

"Yes. I know there's a range limit, but I don't know what the specific distance is. I don't think you can activate them from orbit if the target is on the planet below."

"With all electronics we know of, if it's possible to remotely send it instructions it is possible to remotely destroy it. I would be optimistic about the same being true of these chips, though we might not have enough data yet to design such a solution. It's a very good idea."

"That sounds promising. I'm not - I mean, I guess technically I'm sort of an engineer, but I'm not the sort of engineer who would know about specific technical limitations of the chips. I can tell you what I've observed, that's all. But it sounds like you do have the resources to investigate this, and that's good. We'd be tremendously grateful."

"Of course. I would love to hear about your communities - how they're organized, how you're trained, how you think they might be organized if they were free -"

She nods. "Liars are more embedded in Alteri communities than the other slave races are. Some of us work almost entirely on our own, but many of us work under or alongside Alteri. We usually live in spaces that are only a short distance away from Alteri living and working spaces, if in inconvenient locations. Our basic units of organization are our work crews, the groups assigned to do some particular task together - they're not particularly stable, since individual members can always be sold or contracted out to others, but they're the level on which group organization happens. You're working beside people who do similar or complementary jobs, so if you're not at your best, they'll have to make up the difference. So it's important for all of us to take care of each other. Below that, we're allowed families and partners - raising children without two parents is inefficient, so most houses either require forced marriages or simply present mothers with children and leave it to them to find someone to act as a father. They don't necessarily respect family ties, but they take them into consideration sometimes. We're often bred for specific tasks, though many of us are also reassigned later in life if it becomes convenient for the house. Skilled work is taught by a combination of Liar and Alteri instructors, though specific methods depend on the discipline. We're generally motivated to learn because skilled laborers are more economically useful than unskilled ones, and therefore less likely to be killed or made to work in unsustainable conditions.

I'm really not sure how we'd organize ourselves if we were free - we have no experience with it, and most of us never even think about the possibility. Even knowing about Earth, I don't think I'd seriously considered it even as a hypothetical until after I arrived here. I'm sure we'd benefit from contact with other societies that could be models for us. I'd hate to leave people in a situation where they're free, but their only model of a society that doesn't consist of slaves is that of the Alteri."

She nods again, indicating that she's done, and kind of unsure whether she's gone on for too long.

"What do you know about the other species that are enslaved by the Alteri?"

”There are two of them, neither as populous as we are. Thieves live underground and are mostly used for mining and construction work. They have at least one language of their own, but it's written, not phonetic, and I don't know it. I think my work crew leader does. Sluggards are crystalline entities that can barely move on their own - they live for a long time, reproduce slowly, and can't do much useful work, so there aren't very many of them. They're good structural engineers, though, if you can train them and get them to cooperate with you. We had one on the last ship I was on. Thieves have implants. Sluggards don't, both because they couldn't find a recognizable brain to attach them to and because Sluggards aren't really capable of dangerous defiance."

"How are the Alteri organized politically?"