"What the shit was that," says Belmarniss. "Is this job more complicated than advertised in some way?"

" - sure looks like it. Fuck."

He casts Sending. "In trouble, four unknown teleporters."

"We prepping to fight, run, or surrender?"

"If they're willing to burn three fifth-level spells getting here we can't fight. Mahdi has the scroll of Teleport."

"We have more people than that unless it's one helluva scroll anyway."

"We can't help them if we get captured.

You have Rope Trick?"

"No. I've got Tiny Hut but that doesn't really help."

"So we surrender.

- what do you suppose is keeping them."

"Some logistics failure on their end?" she suggests, putting her hands in the air.

"Very rude, making people stand around in the desert waiting to die or something."

"You have insurance too?" she wonders. "- hey, caravan folks, hands up, whoever just appeared is above our pay grade."

And they wait.

"Seriously kind of rude -"

And then the people appear again. Five of them this time, two wizards and two soldiers and an oddly dressed woman with grey hair.

"Hi, I'm - yikes, did they scare you? I asked how this would parse! He really should have specified if it'd parse as 'put your hands up and hold real still'! We're friendly!"

" - Prince Telcar?" says one of the soldiers standing behind her.

Then he kneels. 

The wizards and the other soldier kneel as well.

" - wait was this not even about me - what the hell -"

"- wait, what? Prince who? No, this wasn't about you, I'm her from an alternate universe and I asked how this would parse and was apparently badly misled."

"You're claiming you're me from an alternate uni- - uh, am I breaking a law not kneeling?"

He looks at the sky and makes a deeply unhappy incoherent noise.

"Technically no, it's a custom," says Fazil, who is kneeling and who looks very angry.

"What do you even mean you're me from an alternate universe?"

"There's four of us all mysteriously pulled from other universes. We have similar names and found you on the list of people with death insurance. Also matching personalities and parents - though not siblings, I'm the only one with a sibling so far unless you have one - other details too, clumsy, write stuff down all the time, that kind of thing -"

"So you were like 'let's send soldiers and uniformed wizards to descend on her at random' and not like, let's get someone to do a Sending about it -"

"Yes in retrospect that would have been a better opener, I'm sorry, none of the four of us know things about local magic, that's going to be your niche, come hang out with us? What are you in the middle of here?"

"Escorting these people who got lost in a cave back to civilization."

The people who got lost in a cave are very confused about what is going on but they figure that they should not be interesting at all to it, probably.

"Are you necessary to the process, or do you want me to ask the guys who spooked you if they can help out with that, or what?"

"I'm not really essential but if your buddies want to shorten the hike for everybody else that sounds probably fine? I guess? I am new to this party and do not speak for it."

Hagan looks at Fazil, who isn't looking at him. 

"- we could use a ride to Sothis," he says to the sand. "And we were going to give all of the slaves six hundred gold each in restitution, which I assume the crown'll cover as an apology for inconveniencing us."

"I have very little sense of the value of local currency because most of what I've been pricing is magic and my universe doesn't have any magic, but if you assume that your guess is better than mine! Can you guys give everybody here a ride to Sothis?" she asks the wizards.

They size them all up. "In two trips."

"Is that okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

So these people will teleport her and Hagan back to a nice, pretty underground room somewhere, and then depart to get everyone else taken to Sothis.

"Uh. Sorry about that?"

"Obviously not your fault," he says after a pause.

"I am so sorry. You don't look like any of the alternate universe versions of you so we couldn't recognize you through the scry. Though I don't know how much that would have helped."

"There are alternate universe versions of me, too? - are they cool?"

"I don't know much about the other ones but mine's, uh, a C-list action film lead if I assume you're the one with the similar name. You third in birth order?"

"Yes. What is an action film?"

"A movie is like a play but you... record it as though with a time-shifted scry you can reuse indefinitely, I guess? Action is the genre, he plays characters who get into a lot of fights."

He looks slightly disappointed. "Okay."

"Sorry. Aitim will be able to tell you more?"

"Aitim?"

"Us-type people and also pharaoh-type people are appearing. Aitim is the pharaoh-type person from my world. We didn't know each other before but I follow politics so I know some things about him and less about his family."

"I guess this doesn't sound likely to interfere with Belmarniss's plans."

"We have only speculative extrapolations about Belmarniss's plans."

"Yeah? Whaddaya got?"

"Entire afterlife system indefensible, replace wholesale?"

"I think I'm gonna like you."

" - anyone actually want me or are you just obliged to lock me up when you see me," he asks a guard.

        "I don't think you're needed for anything, your grace."

"Great."

"Obliged to lock you up when they see you?"

"There are a lot of rules constraining the behavior of the Osirian royal family. 'm not allowed to leave without having gotten my plans approved by security. I didn't, so -"

"Wow."

"Sorry."

"Not your fault. Have fun with your interdimensional reunion thing."

"...yeah, uh, let's go find the rest of us."

"Hagan or whatever you're going by now, you wanna come?"

"I am, to be clear, not at all important here and cannot help with much of anything. But I will not turn down an interdimensional family reunion if you want me there."

"I mean I feel kind of bad about blowing your cover and probably all the me's will probably at least tell you what they know about their yous as a consolation prize?"

"Sure." So he comes along.

"Hello, Belmarniss - who's this?"

"Prince Telcar, apparently."

"...oh! Hello, lovely to meet you, I'm Mirelótë Ambela."

"Preoccupied one with wings is Cam, the one over there is Cor. The others are pharaoh-type people who will each have a corresponding you back home."

"...what are you doing here? - oh. Sorry." he says to Hagan.

He bows. "I live to serve, your grace," he says very blandly.

"It's been a very eventful couple of hours," he says quietly.

"- Belmarniss?"

"Adventuring under an assumed name, teleporting guys recognized him."

"Oh dear. I'm so sorry."

He looks vaguely puzzled at her.

"Mine lives on another less supervised planet wandering around in the wilderness all the time."

He nods. He seems slightly disappointed in this, too.

Pelape looks at Cor and Cam.

"Didn't meet him. And my pharaoh type person is busy being a statue."

"Met mine. There was a war and he did war stuff and now his magic dog probably hates me."

This seems to be the least disappointing of the four.

"And Anaander's you has probably been dead for millennia. The way things are going we can expect more pharaoh type people though."

"If we're just completing squares now we need Anaander's you-lot and Cam's and Mirelótë's me."

"I don't think I have one."

"Don't you have, like, a thousand billion people."

"Yes, but I pay attention to them! I'd have noticed."

"What, is everybody in your empire?"

"That's fair, no."

"You pay enough attention you'd be sure to know about one of us if they were in your empire?"

"Maybe not if she was a kid? But as soon as she tried to do something interesting."

"Oh, that isn't illegal, cool."

"Is there a written -"

"Here."

"Thanks."

"I would be so bored if I made it illegal to do cool things."

"If doing cool things is outlawed then only outlaws will do cool things," Cam mutters to himself.

A new person appears!

"Sleep."

"How -"

"We don't know."

"New face. I don't suppose the Maitimos know who it is off of a few seconds of puzzled staring."

They shake their heads.

"This is weird," mutters Belmarniss, flipping through the written summary.

"Weirder than it looks at first glance?"

"They're not just from more or less recognizable other planes, the planes are all wildly different and so are the pharaoh-type people."

The new, sleeping person is dressed in backwards clothes including one glove and one sock.

"Do you know something?"

" - no. Which is very annoying, I usually do."

"She looks human and I think she's too short to be a Maitimo given a human height distribution. That'd make her Anaander's, can't you guess anything from the clothes?"

"Not human, I don't think."

He gestures for the body to be dragged away.

"She looks human, what else would she be?"

"I'm not human."

"The summary says you're a hive mind when you're at home, but aren't you a hive mind of humans?"

Nod. "But she's not. - I meant it when I said I hadn't figured it out. But she's mine and she's not a human."

"Maybe you could - elaborate on the technical sense of 'human' you're using here."

"I do not think she was born of human parents and grew up doing her cognition with a human brain and now still does that. I do not know exactly which elements of that are off."

Elsewhere, she wakes up.

There is a human standing there. He casts some spells on her. 

"Name?" he asks.

"Hmmmmmmm," she says. "...hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm how about Rubelite? But if you ask the rest of me you might get a different answer! I can't tell me right now."

"Explain."

" - please. I'm - sorry for everything, but please let me watch it's complicated and I'll explain later and I need to know -"

" - what do you need to know for?"

"She's a ship. Aliens made her to talk to me."

"Specifically to talk to you? What kind of aliens?"

"We call them the Presger. I don't know anything about them because it's nearly impossible for us to communicate. They dismantled our ships, when they first entered territory they claimed, not that we knew. Just pulled the people apart, tissue by tissue. They didn't realize they were hurting them, I think. I don't know. They tried sending people they made. As ambassadors. They weren't like her but they were more like her than anything you'd encounter. But this one's a ship. For me. They know I love the ships. They killed them to talk to me, it was the first time they tried - it was a warning -"

"What should we know about her being a ship, what are ships like?"

"The human bodies are - appendages, they use them to do tasks that require interfacing with humans. Work on planets and stations, mostly. They're capable of functioning independently, just like I am, but they're not meant to, even less than I am - I don't know if she's all right -"

"She doesn't look upset. We shouldn't read into that?"

"I would be pretty surprised if she knew how humans move their faces for things. Would you all shut up -"

"Do you know how you got here?"

"I got here partially!"

"Do you know what caused you to get here."

"No!!!"

"Do you know who the pharaoh is."

"No."

"Do you mean to hurt the pharaoh or anybody in the palace?"

"How should I know? I'm the only me here! What if the rest of me means to do that and has a very good reason?"

"Oh, cut it out," he says to Anaander sharply. 

Tears are running down her face. "Do - some goddamn spell - if you think I'm lying -"

"I don't think you're lying but I haven't cried non-volitionally since I was three."

"You really really don't understand - a ship - she's a ship -"

"We got that."

"Is it just that you don't know if she's okay, or -"

"This is the most important - the only important thing for the survival of the Radch. For a thousand years I have not known what I needed to do. But now I do and - I need to understand her. They killed everyone I cared about to teach me one word of their language and they - they send me this to -"

"- we still don't know how to get any of us home. But there's more of you and more of her back there, right? If she's made to talk to you they'll find each other?"

- nod.

"- oh, oh, I have a question. Do YOU know what caused me to get here?"

"I don't answer questions. Do you have magical abilities?"

"Oh. Do humans not answer questions? Oh, that was a question. Okay. I'm trying to learn." She nods, and doesn't answer.

"Do you have magical abilities."

"Our world doesn't have magic. They're not going to get anything out of her, Khemet, come on -"

"Are you sure you want to meet her. Don't you think she'll be upset about the murder."

"Do you imagine I'm not?"

"I saw some people before who looked like me. They weren't me though."

The security people try Remove Curse and Break Enchantment.

She isn't cursed or enchanted.

Does she understand what killing people is.

"I'm confused about whether I am supposed to answer questions!"

"You are!"

"Oh! Okay! I do know what killing people is."

"While the rest of you is not here, and you are the only bit of you who is here, will you kill people?"

"I do not think so!"

They will declare this good enough and bring her on in.

"Hello!!! Some of you look like me."

"...no we don't."

"Yes you do!"

"She's more observant than you," Anaander says smugly.

" - under -"

" - yes, yes."

"Oh!" says Rubelite in Anaander's direction. "It's some you! Only a little bit though."

Anaander nods. "You know me already?"

"I have never met you before unless the rest of me did it VERY recently and unexpectedly! I know what you look like because all of you look the same."

"A little bit of me got stolen here same as a little bit of you, and as all of these people. There's a writeup explaining everything, but it's written for humans."

"I am literally the only one of us who is human."

"You are the one who looks the most like me! I do not have wings. And the others are each different in a different way."

"What I'm getting here is that Anaanders are all clones or something and Rubelites aren't, so they have all the faces of our cluster so far and then some."

"We are all clones, and ship crews typically aren't," she confirms.

"Well, Rubelite, welcome to my universe. It has magic and mostly doesn't have hive minds and for some reason a bunch of people with our personality are appearing here mysteriously. We're expecting two more of the kind of person Anaander is and then maybe we're done."

"It wouldn't be all that wild a coincidence if we're missing a whole pair, and that's if we assume there's a fixed set slated to arrive and we're being grabbed at random."

"Some of the arrivals have been kind of conveniently timed. - for one thing I would've killed many of these people if they'd arrived first."

"You're welcome?"

"Thank you! I am grateful we didn't get off to a much worse start than we did."

"Although if I understand correctly one of those spells would in fact have killed me if I didn't count as lawful and some of me do not."

"Yes, that's how it could easily have gone badly."

"I'm confused!"

"Here, I'm done reading, let me know what you need clarified as you go?"

Rubelite starts reading.

Anaander watches her intently.

Cor watches Anaander.

After a little while, she relaxes slightly. 

"I was not expecting ANY of this to happen," announces Rubelite, when she's read the whole thing.

"Well, neither were we. What - were you expected to do? Is Anaander right that you were made by aliens to communicate with her?"

"I was STOLEN. I am a human built AI with biologically human ancillaries just like humans' spaceships but the Presger brought me up. I was made to talk to humans. The Presger do not really understand about different humans but I noticed that my humans don't know anything about what anybody else's humans are doing! It's interesting."

"Do they understand now? It would - it would change a lot of things if they understood."

"No! It is confused! It isn't a they. I think."

- nod. 

She looks at everyone else.

"They don't understand that humans do not act collectively, as one unit. The treaties all presume that we do, which means I have to enforce them internally, if anyone anywhere does anything that violates them they'll understand that to be humanity deciding to go back on them."

" - is this related to the murder."

"Yes but it still was a mistake, not a complicated tradeoff or something."

"I think it is an exaggeration to say that it will understand it in a way."

"You're the expert. If humans outside the Radch war on another sentient species, is the treaty I signed with the Presger violated?"

"Yes. They shouldn't do that. It would be bad."

"I know. Stopping them from doing that also involves doing lots of bad things but I have been doing it anyway."

"It is complicated and the Presger is sometimes stupid about things." Nod nod nod.

"Yes. It is." 

"I'm helping!!!"

"I know. I'm very glad because this is very important to me."

"The translators are trying but they are SO confused."

"I have been afraid for a very long time that there would be a mistake or a misunderstanding. I think maybe you can help."

"This piece of paper says I cannot go back to the rest of me and implies the Presger is not even a little bit here. I can help anyway! But I can't help me help. It is weird to be only this much! Is it weird for you to be only that much? Are you too human to answer questions? The human said she didn't answer questions."

"It is weird for me to only be this much. Humans can answer questions. Some humans have protector jobs. They protect other humans from coming to harm. Humans do not like to come to harm because every body has all of them and if it's lost all of them is lost. Humans with protector jobs do not like answering questions. Other humans might."

"Oh, okay! I had not talked to any humans before and overgeneralized."

"The guard was male."

"Barbarian humans care a lot whether you guess correctly about whether they have a penis. All the protector-humans in this place do, because they think it is necessary to protect people well."

"How does that help?"

"Part of the answer is that barbarian humans are wrong about lots of things but the other part is that barbarian humans kill each other with weapons that require physical strength to operate effectively, and the ones with penises also have things going on in their bodies that make them stronger. Much of the barbarianism starts to recede once they switch to weapons that do not require physical strength to operate."

Rubelite turns to Khemet. "Are you one of the barbarian humans? Do you think this thing? What does it sound like when you think it in your brain?"

"Maybe don't feed her vocabulary that'll make her sound ruder than she has to," Pelape mutters to Anaander.

He glares at Anaander. "Osirians have gender. In our world, the people who treat men and women differently think that the people who treat them the same are barbarians, because treating them the same results in unwanted children and then they abandon or kill those. We believe that men are suited to some things and women are suited to other things, though there are some things that both are suited for, and that people are most likely to earn good lives if the men and the women are given different responsibilities."

Rubelite looks at Cam.

"Yes, yes, like it says in the writeup, I'm working on it."

"Oh good!"

"The belief that men and women are different and suited for different things is common to societies with too many babies and approximately absent from societies with the right number of babies."

"I cannot have babies! This is okay. I do not know what people do with babies."

"The babies slowly turn into people and lots of people really like watching them do that. Also they are soft and nice to touch."

"Babies are very good. Though I'm told humans don't think so as much as we do."

"Babies are screamy squashy grubs that take several years to ever be more pleasant than not to be in a room with. I'm pretty sure this is just, like, the elf opinion in general, because drow solve this problem with slave labor and surface elves solve it by slowly going extinct."

"Wow that's horrible."

"Your poor children!"

" - might actually explain the near-universal evilness, children in neglectful orphanages all grow up with serious issues."

"No, I don't think so, lots of little drow children are sweethearts and the slaves mostly in fact do their jobs, I think that's the vicious propaganda campaign asserting that Pharasma is really racist because our ancestors got cooties from Rovagug and will condemn us all to the Abyss no matter what we do so we'd better get in good with any demon lord who'll have us and hope that helps when we get there."

"...is that true?"

"Not as true as I was led to believe but I can't rule out it applying to drow who die of anything other than infanticide with data I already have. It just, you know, doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things whether Pharasma has that exact drawback."

"I am reasonably confident that's false. It's false for orcs, at least, the other race frequently characterized as always chaotic evil."

"Good to know."

"How did a species that hates babies evolve in the first place without being, like, R-selected bugs or something?"

"Beats me, we're originally from another planet and I don't know much about what it's like there. Maybe we like babies in the right climate or on the right drugs or something."

"How determined are drow to do slavery instead of just paying people to look after their kids and so on?"

"There is a lot of slavery. Even if you don't count drow men it's like half slaves down there. I don't know where the money'd come from to start paying for that much labor if you had to do it suddenly. Maybe a ton of trade with weirdly benevolent and non-racist surfacers if there are those to hand could make it work, I think it's at least a lot cheaper to grow food up here, but I don't know that there are enough weirdly benevolent non-racist surfacers."

"Andoran's making a really spirited try."

"I mean, sure, if you want to call sending people to show up and murder all the drow they see because the drow are getting in the way of taking their slaves 'benevolent and non-racist', they're great at it. I'm not saying I can't see why the strategy appeals but people still die when they do that."

"I'd offer to try ourselves but we don't really grow that much surplus food. - I guess conceivably Cam could terraform the whole desert while he's here? Could you?"

"We are sure putting a ton of projects on my plate for the next five days. If you want it to be sure to stick I'd need a lot of climate data and reasonable confidence that your climate isn't magic or anything, if you want the quick solution of a whole bunch of pioneer species seeded wherever I see sand that's easier but might just not work for some reason I can't precisely anticipate."

"This seems more obviously worth a couple hours than a full day but it'd be really helpful to our ability to do things internationally if it worked."

"When I've done the IUD continuing education thing I will be doing heavy programming shit to integrate the translation software and maybe if I hit a point where I'm stuck I'll go out for a flight and drop seeds, sure. To be clear, I might easily have way more than five days, I just have no way to be sure unless they think to write me a letter." He holds out his hand; it remains empty. "They haven't yet."

"Thank you."

Another person appears.

"Sleep," says a guard.

She doesn't.

"Not my kind," reports Mirelótë.

"Tongues."

"We need you not to mindread people, can you do that?"

" - yes -" She is staring between Mirelótë and Pelape rather desperately.

"Can you swear you've done that."

"No, I don't swear to things. - where am I - who are you - you look like -"

"We're a bunch of alternate universe versions of each other and you getting summoned here inexplicably. Why don't you swear to things, we are not all confident we have private thoughts down -"

"I'm not reading your mind."

He disappears. The new person disappears with him. 

He comes back a second later. 

"She's on my personal demiplane. If she's a me we shouldn't leave her there alone but we can take only the people who are sure they have it or willing to take the chance."

"I'm sure."

"I am too but all things considered probably shouldn't be one of a small handful going to keep her company."

"I don't care very much."

"Nor do I."

"We could also de-statue the other one there as long as we're selecting people who can put up with it one way or the other, and see if he'll swear to things."

"We could but do we want him, even if he'll cut out the mindreading?"

"It... seems sort of interesting that you have wound up in situations where you don't wind up killing any of us. He might be important sooner or later."

He glances at Cor.

"I'm not going to melt. If you can get him to not read people's minds that seems better than leaving him as a statue forever. If he is very obnoxious I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"All right." He, Mirelótë. Hemaka and Hagan can appear with the statue of Maitimo.

He takes off his cloak and pins it around the statue of Maitimo. He casts a spell.

He stops being stone. He falls to the ground, shaking.

"Hello. I'm Mirelótë Ambela, those are their graces Princes Khemet, Hemaka, and Telcar."

- he bows. "I'm sorry. I don't know how I came to be here." - glance at Mirelótë. "- and I don't know you, though I feel like I ought to."

"Will you swear to not read peoples' minds? They don't know how to stop you."

"Of course. Do you have a wording in mind -"

"'For the duration of my time away from my native plane or the next ten years whichever expires first, I will not use osanwë deliberately or prepensively to receive data from any person who has neither expressed to me their desire that I do so in the specific way I then do, nor been verified to have mastered private thoughtkeeping'."

"May I have a few minutes to think?"

"Yes." She turns to the new Maitimo. "I presume you heard the introductions; this one's presumably Nelyafinwë Maitimo; what's your name?"

"- Nelyafinwë Maitimë. I haven't been called that in a long time."

"Would you prefer something else?"

"I don't really have a preference."

"All right. Why is it you don't swear to things - it's a reasonable enough policy but obviously not universal among the lot of you, and it's going to be complicated to put you back with everyone else if we can't be confident of their privacy -"

"My memories can be tampered with. I don't really care where you put me but I'm not reading anyone's minds."

"I see. I look like someone you know?"

"Annie," she says very quietly.

"- a lot of people like me and corresponding people like you have been appearing in Khemet's palace. He's one of you. If Annie appears what state should we expect her in?"

"She's gone. She's dead. She's been dead for a long time."

"Ah." She looks at Khemet.

"How long."

"Thirty thousand years. Give or take. I can figure it out more precisely if it's important -"

"It's not." He shakes his head slightly at Mirelótë.

"I'm sorry."

"Maitimo, any revisions? - you might also want to pick a nickname, we're expecting more of you."

"No revisions." He repeats it as she said it. "What might distinguish me from the other ones you are expecting, or should I pick at random -"

"Of the three you're the only magic Elf; mine and Cam's are both chip Elves instead."

"...chip...Elves?"

"Instead of Ainu-style osanwë and such we have metal things serving for us as magic souls do for you."

He glances around as if hoping more context for this might be on one of the walls. Bows his head again. "I guess you could do 'Magic'."

"Well, she's magic, and so's Khemet, but it'll do as a stopgap when they show up if no one has a better idea."

"My legal name right now is Lisa Anderson."

"What's your world like right now?"

"Elves and humans mostly live separately, and have for at least twenty thousand years; humans do not remember Elves except in legend. The humans live in big hideous cities. They have machines that do computing. They've been to their moon."

"What have you been up to? How did you meet Annie?"

"Annie dropped on me in a magical accident. I died shortly after that. She lived in Valinor and did healing and eventually died, I assume of old age. Mandos eventually decided to bring me back, almost thirty thousand years after I died. I spent a while becoming more functional. Then I got a human job."

"Okay. It's been impressed on us that being a Maitimo isn't a consistent character reference, in this case with respect to worrying about people who don't have months to practice getting mindread, but I think it could be important to figuring out what's happening that everyone be in one place. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Where am I?"

"Khemet has his own miniature world and brought us there, since I know private thoughts and the other three are fine with the risk."

"Okay. Are people conscious if they are turned to stone?"

" - no."

"Would you please -"

"What happened to you?"

"A lot of things."

"Utumno?"

" - is your world before - god. Don't let him out again. He does it again, when you let him out again."

"We're not going to let him out again. Even if I don't get back to convey extra warning."

"They waited a very long time but he pleaded and promised and he could help with the orcs, nothing else could, and - he was lying. Don't let him out no matter how long it's been or what he says."

Nod. "We fixed the orc situation a different way. They're all fine."

"Tell all the other worlds and people who might show up. It's very important."

"The other two Ardas have finished their second war. Although Cam's Melkor is still alive, he's held back by a thorough oath now."

"There are exactly four Ardas?"

"So far. We don't have a way to go looking for more, people are just appearing."

Nod. "The request stands."

"Under what circumstances would you not want to be a statue."

"If you figure out how to resurrect Annie."

He looks confusedly at Mirelótë.

"...doesn't make obvious sense to me either. Is there context we should have, Maitimë -?"

"She'd want to be alive. And if she were alive, she'd want me, and I wouldn't mind being alive if you have her. - I love her."

"That I had gathered."

"Well.

Is turning her into stone expensive or anything, seems more humane if even thirty thousand years doesn't fix it. I imagine with magic Elves there's no rollback option."

"It's not exactly cheap but Cam can pay us back. I can't do it here, though, I'll have to go get some people."

"Maitimë, am I correct in thinking you're aware Annie would be disappointed if you went around reading people's minds?"

" - obviously?"

"Just checking. I think we can take that as adequate for as long as it takes to find some people who know the statue spell."

So he Plane Shifts them all back.

He glances around a little bit then steps back against a wall and looks down at the ground.

"He swore, my wording. Her us is dead and she went through Utumno or something like it and prefers to be a statue about it, I think she won't do any harm while waiting on that."

"They call it Angband."

She nods.

"What was the wording?"

Mirelótë repeats it.

"Fine."

"I think that would let him read my code! But it is not here."

"We won't let the creepy one at your code."

He continues to look at the ground and not say anything.

He has someone in to do the statue spell. And then there is a stone Elf woman looking vacantly out at them.

"Cam, could I ask you for a large bag of diamonds? We're running through our treasury, here."

"Cut and carat and color?"

"Varied? Resurrections want whole ones but most other spells want them ground up. Greater Restoration, which makes people stop being statues, requires a lot of diamond dust."

"Dust," says Cam, dropping a bag at his feet, then a second bag; "rocks, miscellaneous nonbort. Enjoy. Who here know things about local orbital mechanics?"

"For complicated things you'd want my father."

He looks up from the tablet. "What?"

"Orbital mechanics." He goes over to sit by him. "Wanna put some things in space. Also does your tablet know my language and the local one yet?"

"It does! It's a good tablet." He pats it fondly. "Putting things in space is very hard, they have to be moving really fast. I have numbers if you want them."

"I can put things in space, just have to match up your numbers with mine in case something important is different."

"I know things about orbital mechanics but I think not the right things. Oh well."

"Today is weird. Why is the creepy one staring at the floor over there?"

He looks up at her. "I don't want to concern people. I can look somewhere else, if you'd like."

"It's not really concerning, just weird."

"I got here first and that complicates the hell out of spin so he's trying for inoffensive, I guess."

He does not answer that.

"He -"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"I was going to explain what was going on inside his head. He decided that he would tell me not to do that."

"How do you know what is going on inside his head? Do you read minds too? I did not think you could do that! It does not seem like a nice thing to do."

"People show their thoughts on their faces and their bodies and that almost always tells you what they are thinking. Most humans do not know how to interpret it, though."

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

"I do not really have a way to not do it. You are harder to understand that way than most people because you do not do any of the people signs of your thoughts."

"That is probably good!"

"The rest of us can sort of guess what you're probably thinking but just by being similar to you, and you're definitely harder to do this with than the others. And there are surprises like Belmarniss's inexplicable hatred of babies."

"I don't hate them."

"I think this way of guessing is okay! I think being like me is good."

"I might also have better guesses with him because of being sort of like him though I do not think I'm very like him."