"May I try it?"

"Sure. What are you going to burn?"

"What sort of things count?"

"Most things can count but some things are more efficient. Vocabulary words, where you found something, people's names, how many of something there are."

Flinch. "I can look them up again afterwards, right?"

"Yeah."

So he writes down a few phrases in Martian Portuguese so he can read them again if he forgets them. "Do you have to sing them a specific way?"

"That's how I discovered it works on writing, too. You'll erase the writing if you're holding it when you try, if it works."

" - ah. Okay. Will I remember what I decided to forget?"

"Depends how you phrase it."

So he concentrates on the phrases of Martian Portuguese and wants a light breeze and sings them.

Nothing happens.

"What were you trying to do?"

"Breeze. It might just mean I'm not singing right, I will probably want to get a better singer to try before we conclude it doesn't work."

"I don't actually know your language so I can't tell if you worded it badly or something. It's not about how prettily you sing."

"We can do a few more trials later. Are there other things your world needs? Besides the fix to aging?"

"The other world had lots of neat things but I didn't understand most of them well enough to know if they'd be useful to us."

"What sort of things have your people invented - do you have metal, do you have fire..."

"No, yes."

"And writing, but only recently -"

" - you come up with it?"

Flap. "Mmhm."

"You've accomplished kind of an astonishing range of things."

"I wanted writing to relearn things I burned but then it turned out writing burns too and then I went for broke."

"We have people stationed in Godspring, they'd have been able to help out with some of these problems."