At least there's always Milliways.
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"Sure, let's do this thing!"

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"One last thing: you can get away with not telling her anything for free if you don't want to. And she might try to cheat you, but just don't let her and you'll be fine."

He leans out the door and yells for Saraisan, who doesn't take too long to show up. She looks around like she's never been here before.

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Before Saraisan does show up, "Woah I thought you were gonna handle talking to her about doing this? Since you know her? I don't even know your name."

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"Sure, I'll do the talking for, let's say forty-eight rings?"

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"That's a lot cheaper than messing up this deal would be!"

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"You'd've done fine."

He negotiates a very unimpressively average deal for barely below market rate. Costs about fourteen thousand rings. Saraisan sits down to start working on them.

"Learn anything watching that?" he asks Liane afterward.

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"I guess so? I never was a merchant. Message runner when I was a little one, and then airship crew, girls get to do that 'cause we're usually lighter, and then the Preparation Corps."

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"What did you do in the Preparation Corps?"

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"First couple of months, sailed to the high arctic and helped a bunch of scientists not die while they explored and evaluated city sites. They really needed the help, let me tell you. Built outposts and research stations and radio towers and city core generators and stuff. Ferried supplies around. Rescued stranded people. Fixed broken snow-crawlers. Ran messages and packages around, just like old times. Hunting for food. What's being a governor like?"

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"It's pretty awful but at least I have no one but myself to blame for my frigid uncivilized ice adventures. There are a lot of meetings. I've spent more time than I wanted to trying to figure out how you build a city and I'm having a hard time attracting the kinds of people I need. I wish you wanted to immigrate."

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"Meetings. Well, I helped build some cities. Most of the work revolved around heating them so it's probably not really relevant? You have Saraisan. You wish I wanted to immigrate... Because you know my 'alt'?"

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"And because of what you've said and because of your morals and the skills you have and because you're human and might have human children."

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"Aww, thank you. I'm flattered that you care about my childbearing capacity." She shakes her head. "No, I really am flattered about the rest of it. That hit a nerve, is all."

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"I bet you have more humans left in your world than mine. We have less than ten thousand."

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"Probably. But that's not... Whatever. Not a big deal, really. Wow, what happened?"

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"Probably nothing as bad as happened in yours. There were maybe thirty thousand right after unification, humans don't have a lot of kids, we get executed a little more often than other species, it adds up. Or subtracts down. If there weren't so many humans settling for caralendri it'd be okay but caralendri are a lot easier to find, I know dozens and I only knew three humans counting myself before I was seventeen."

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"...I'm confused." She doesn't really know what questions to ask, what she's missing, so that's a good place to start. "...What's a caralendri? Does this have something to do with magic?"

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"Saraisan is a caralendar. She can't have kids with a human, a human can't have kids with her, but not everyone would rather look harder for a human when there's lots of caralendri right there. And any humans who only have sex with caralendri and buy orphaned beluli aren't having human children."

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"Oh." Beluli must be some kind of pet, then.

"Well, I wanted kids someday. Never found anyone to marry. And now the frost's come and I have so much to do. If I get hurt badly again I'll probably give scouting up, though. There's only so much of me to give." She waves her metal arm slightly. 

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"I wonder if Bar has anything for that. She has technology that lets humans change their sex, she probably has technology to let you grow your arm back. Am I right, Bar?"

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Limb regeneration may be out of your price range, but it is available. More advanced prosthetics are available as well, if you would like one.

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"Oh! Huh! So many new things today. I'll think about it! I've kind of gotten used to this one."

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"It doesn't take too long to save up if you have a really in-demand skill but I can't think how you'd use your skills in Milliways. Not much need for radio towers or rescuing stranded people here. I could teach you what I know about having sex with people for money but I'm not sure the margins would be good enough on that to let you save anything."

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"Also, no. I am not doing that. I can raid some more abandoned factories for paper money, and if the door likes me I'll be able to get it later."

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"I hope it does like you."

Saraisan finishes enchanting things. The boxes aren't literally ice cold but they're pretty chilly. The rods are all glowing red. They sure do give off a lot of heat.

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