"I'll bet you do," says Libby.

"Where public relations means that, and also intake for would-be vampires," Elspeth continues. "I also have application forms on me. People in Milliways usually aren't interested in immigrating, but some of them have taken the forms to look at."

"Application forms?" she echoes. "And what exactly are the benefits of vampirism?"

Elspeth hands over a PRPR-1-ENG and a 1-A: Introduction to Vampires.

"Amazing," murmurs Libby. "And very thorough. Did you write the form, too?"

"Of course. There's actually a missing option in question four, it's just left out because there are very few people who date or marry vampires without being their mates and they can fill that in under 'other' when applicable."

"I think I'm starting to get a sense of your style."

"It took you that long? Most people feel like they've known me for years after I say 'hello'," Elspeth jokes.

"Maybe I'm just slow."

"Or not easily convinced you have information you don't? I could rapid-fire a lot of information at you, but I try to avoid doing that with humans - my brain runs in higher definition than yours. It can be problematic. When I talk with words there's less misdirection, but not more content."

"You're definitely more, hmm... you're easier to get to know than most people."

"I'd wonder what was up on your end, if I wasn't."

"I'd have to be either so bad at it I couldn't tell the difference, or so good at it the difference was negligible," she suggests.

"I don't think anyone is the first thing," Elspeth says. "I can talk to people who are comatose. I guess the second thing could work."

"Well, is there a theoretical maximum for the informativeness of a conversation, and do you tend to approach it?"

"I don't know. I probably could, if I turned it way up. This is me on default right now."

"How would you go about turning it up?"

"Trying... to? There's not a button on the back of my neck."

Libby giggles.

"I was born with my powers. My parents got to watch me dream when I was a newborn. I just do stuff. It's like deciding to move my arm."

"I guess my question is something more like: do you increase your information density by having more things to say and packing them all into the same message, or by communicating the same things in ways that tend to lead your audience to more not-necessarily-related conclusions?"

"I do some of the second thing, but more when I'm working at it - I can figure out some information I don't already have, by figuring out what it would make sense to say, because it makes sense to say things that will cause people to understand true things. But that's clunky and doesn't work very reliably. I haven't experimented a lot with improving my verbal density. If I need to be faster, I dispense with talking. I don't often have to quickly say a lot to a human."

"Sometimes you can increase information density by saying fewer things," says Libby. "Like that form, for example. Having the non-magical spouse/lover option for werewolves but not vampires implies that for vampires it's rare-to-nonexistent."

Elspeth nods. "A lot of male werewolves imprint, but female ones never do. Any vampire - well, at least any category of vampire we know how to identify - can mate."

"That part sounds inconvenient," she says.