"We only just arrived. With grad students the thing I used to say was 'pretend I asked the question about your reading that I should ask to get the most interesting answer'?"

That line feels vaguely familiar. Did Mordred use it today? Maybe he should've paid more attention to his background conversation with whoever.

This is in fact the second time he has used this line today. It's a perfectly good line and he sees no reason not to reuse it.

"Bertrand Russell's new book is excellent. It's about how the nineteenth century was fundamentally shaped by a struggle between freedom and control. Something I suppose we're both interested in. He doesn't quite say it's about Stalin and Hitler but the subtext is obvious."

Wait, the cultist of dominion and power likes Bertrand Russell, that's actually kind of odd. "Ooh, I haven't had a chance to read it but I loved his other books, do you have a favorite --"

Very genuine smile. "Oh, a fan. I have a soft spot for Why I Am Not A Christian because it was so influential on me, but I also like Marriage and Morals, and I also enjoy his mathematical work. I'm an amateur but I've been enjoying working my way through the Principia Mathematica."

Zoe stopped a bit short when she noticed Oswald was talking to one of those people from Ethiopia, and didn't join them when Mordred went to. Maybe it's better if she doesn't make her face too known to them. She hangs back and watches and tries to not look too connected to the others.

Wasn't that the one who's supposed to be psychic? There is stuff they're trying to keep other people from knowing and that seems hard to do with someone who is actually psychic. Is she reading her mind right now? Zoe starts fiddling with her zippo.

bounce bounce no stop that's weird "Most recently I liked Free Thought and Official Propaganda but I read Why I Am Not A Christian so many times as a teenager that three chapters fell out of it."

Smile. "A man after my own heart. --I always wonder what he would think of the occult, if he knew."

After this Oswald is going to ask Mordred about the significance or lack thereof of Bertrand Russell to cult activity, his primary knowledge is that he's a controversial philosopher and it feels like he's missing something. ...And also about his work in general. He has found one way to make friends and it's by encouraging infodumps.

Smile! "I feel like skepticism doesn't mean denying what's in front of your eyes because it shouldn't be possible -- but of course I'll almost certainly never have the opportunity to ask."

"Exactly! I have psychic powers, this is a thing I can observe about the world. It is as real and empirical as gravity. The real skeptical attitude isn't saying the supernatural doesn't exist, it's studying them the way we'd study anything else."

Okay she may well empirically have psychic powers but that's such a wild sentence to hear in a conversation about skepticism.

Oswald, they empirically learned a spell last month.

Not saying it's false! It's probably true to be honest! It's just also wild!

"I don't know how busy you are in Malta, would you like to join me in looking at churches? And forts, and megalithic temples, and so on. There are lots of interesting things to see here and I have to do them all by myself because Louise is busy. And my other options are, you know, Joan, Mariam, and Anchisa."

"I would love to join you in looking at churches and forts and megalithic temples and so on," he says, extremely sincerely.

"Thank you! You know, Mariam and Joan are lovely but Mariam only wants to go to parties with Peter Lukas and Joan is like 'great, an opportunity to practice sparring. And Anchisa is. Anchisa."

"I have not spoken much with Anchisa but I think I know what you mean."

"Are there a lot of parties like that to attend here?" He cannot make himself sound enthusiastic about this but he can make himself sound curious, which he is.

"Oh, it's endless. Inaaya, I'm going to a soiree at Lord So-and-so's summer house-- it's not even the summer, I don't know why they're there. Inaaya, I'm going to get lunch with a member of parliament. Inaaya, I'm going to a meeting of the Malta Committee for the Protection of Morals. And I say to her, Mariam, all of us are in the life except for Anchisa, I don't know what you're doing, do you really think we have any morals to protect. Is this the business you think we're in, Mariam."

"And Lukas attends these as well? I don't know how they're not both exhausted."

"Mariam, our boss brutally murders people, I say. And she says that the Committee for Protection of Morals isn't about protecting those morals, it is about keeping people from having deviant sex. And I say that I don't think that's very moral, brutal murder being significantly worse than deviant sex by anyone's lights, and anyway Mariam has deviant sex all the time. Mostly so she can blackmail people with it."

Mordred is visibly trying very hard not to crack up laughing.

"And then she says I do not understand how forming connections works, which is true, and is why she is in charge of forming connections and I am in charge of looking at interesting monoliths."