My impression is that the outing went well. I don't think I have any particular questions that still need answering; I tended to just ask them as we went. Thank you for the offer, though! It was good to meet you, and I would welcome letters from you if you think of something else you'd like to say.

And vice versa, if you want to send anything to me. It's been good to meet you!

Vesherti sets down the ansible and goes back to using his screen.

"Traveller — your friend and I had a nice conversation. They asked me for some information about Helper customs that they thought you would want to hear from them, and not from me, so I plan to head out so that you can talk about it. Should I plan to come back in the morning for another outing, or do you think you'll want the day to yourself tomorrow?"

That's a good question - he should probably pace himself, but if people want to come visit that's fine, and actually he should give them a notepad ansible to give to the Crafter megaproject people in case they want to get in touch with him. Also if they have more feedstock for him, he's already gone through the last batch.

"We can definitely get you more feedstock; we have lots of items that need to be reused somehow. I'll ask for some to be delivered," he agrees. "And I'll also let people know that you may be open to visitors, but we'll coordinate to make sure you don't get too many people showing up."

"Please don't hesitate to send me a letter if you need anything. I enjoyed our outing today."

He enjoyed it too, especially seeing the city from the rooftop.

Vesherti waves goodbye and heads back toward the city on his little cart.

The next morning, there are several large grey crates of miscellaneous items, and a large grey portable pen of chickens, who are somewhat ruffled about having been relocated.

He brings the other chicken down and sets her up in a pen next to the newcomers, and then spends most of the day converting feedstock and building the new flock a permanent house in the form of an enclosed platform planted with grass and bushes sourced from the area around his house, with a smaller structure on one side providing the chickens with space to sleep and lay their eggs and housing the mechanisms that will automatically provide them with food and water. He keeps an eye on his various ansibles, too, and keeps the book printer going to produce a variety of reference material starting with the promised star atlas.

Mid way through the morning, a woman in a brown robe with a green stole, a backpack, and a lapel pin which Traveler might recognize as being the symbol of þereminia's library gets off the train and waves at him.

"Good morning, Traveler," she writes on a portable screen once she's close enough. "Do you remember how some of us wanted to make an addon for your book-printer? I have one that we think should work here."

She points at her backpack.

"We tested it on the model printer you gave us, and it should just snap in near the back. There's a little shaft that needs to be turned to power it, and we were hoping that you would put in a crank-shaft for that, but otherwise it doesn't need any setup or tending."

Oh good! He spent some time a couple days ago trying to figure out how to make an ansible relay but he didn't get very far on it, it turned out to be harder than he thought, so he's glad they figured something out that doesn't need that. He's got a book printing but he can make a copy of the printer if she wants to show him how it goes on and he'll add it before the next one - she can also take copies of the books he's printed so far this morning if she wants, he had a request for star charts and he's been printing some stuff about crafting-based machine design.

She smiles brightly at him.

"That would be great! Thank you."

And she will demonstrate how the device is designed to clip into the back of a printer, with little arms that reach out to gently touch the library ansible from the opposite side as the existing printing mechanisms.

"When you put in a book request with the normal lever, that taps this button, and the mechanism sends an 'abort' signal for anything in progress. It will automatically re-try it once your book finishes printing. And this little hook here lifts the arm of the print head, so that when we request a book it doesn't print anything. So once it's in your printer, you should be able to pretty much ignore it, and we'll be able to fetch books in the background whenever you're not using it for something else."

Sounds good to him! Is there anything else she wants while she's out here?

She takes a moment to consider the question.

"Are there any other books you have in your house that you're willing to share? Copies of the books you wrote, maybe? My life's work is to make sure books are preserved and accessible to as many people as possible," she explains, pointing to her lapel pin. "I'd be happy to stay and chat if you would like that, but there's nothing else I want from you."

He has his books and some other things, yeah; nothing that isn't in the library, but it'll be faster to get them from him if they're getting everything anyway. If she'll wait a minute he'll grab his book box.

The box in question is only the size of a sandwich, but it contains several dozen miniaturized books: How big should he make her copies? He's not sure how much carrying capacity she has available or what scale her group is comfortable working at.

"I can comfortably carry as much weight as a cube of water about this big weighs," she says, holding her hands about a quarter of a meter apart. "But if you have more books than that, I can go fetch a cart. And the high-precision document copier we have at the city library can read pages that are scaled to be about 1/25 of that length, but please make them a bit bigger than that so we don't lose the fine detail."

A twentyfifth of that is pretty tiny, does he need to worry about them being able to turn pages or anything?

"I don't think so? I'm going to have to page through the books anyway to feed them to the copier, and using tweezers won't make that process much more difficult. But a twentyfifth is the limit, it's perfectly fine for the books to be any size larger than that. What scale are they at right now? One sixth?"

He shakes a couple of postage-stamp-sized books out into his hand: He'd say more like a twentyfifth as it stands. It's really no big deal for him to enlarge her copies, though, he just needs to know how big they should be, which is really down to how much she cares about having a bulky box to carry vs. being able to easily turn the pages.

"I don't mind carrying a bulky box. Can you make the box just small enough to fit in my backpack?"

She shrugs the backpack off, and shows him the size of the opening under the main flap.

Sure!

And here's the copies for her!

"Thanks again!"

She hoists her backpack over her shoulder and waves goodbye.

And he goes back to his building, until a little later when one of the crows wants him to read them a letter one of the locals gave them.

The letter is noticeably less well-written than some of the other messages he's read recently, but still perfectly understandable.

To Traveler on Behalf of the Crows,

I understand that the roof of the building (I live there) is a public area. The crows have as much ability to be there as anyone.

But.

When I went up to the roof for my morning routine, the crows were in the spot (I sit there usually). They said that it was a good spot to watch (the space below), which is true. That is why I sit there.

But there are many other spots that are (reachable by birds, and not by me). I would like to ask that they be there instead, at least in the morning when I am sitting on the roof.

I am sure I could have figured out how to say this to them eventually, but I am not as good at figuring out how to say things as some people are, and I didn't want to scare them.

I am disgruntled, but only because they were in the spot I like. If they joined me on the roof in a different spot, I would be gruntled.

If this letter reaches you: thank you for translating.

Written by: Đovremat

Đovremat,

he copies directly from the letter after converting it,

I've explained the situation to the crows and they've agreed to vacate the table and chairs when you come up. They apologize for the inconvenience; it seems to me that they're still struggling with the implications of Helpers not being able to communicate in the way they're used to, so hopefully they'll get better at interacting with you over time as they figure that out. In any case please feel free to write to me again if you have any more problems with them.

He signs his letter with a patch of gold-flecked indigo and gives it to the crows to bring back.

Đovremat takes the letter, nods to the crows, and that seems to be the end of it. Over the next few days, they continue with their morning routine:

Shortly after sunrise, they leave to walk to a nearby shop (carrying yesterday's dishes). There, they buy a bowl of oatmeal and a bottle of fruit juice. Then they return to their building and sit on the roof with any crows who might decide to join them, in the same chair, facing the same direction. They eat their breakfast and listen to the sounds of the city waking up for 0.4 hours, and then work on their thesis for another 1 hour before leaving for work.

The next day, however, they will also bring a bowl of unsalted mixed nuts which they set on the roof's border wall, pointedly away from their chair. Just in case of crows.