"So you already know your version of me, I take it. That's unusual. The others of us Bells - that's what we call ourselves as a group - who have yous at all don't meet you until we're seventeen or so."

"We met at Battle School," he says. "Maybe you don't have one of those."

"My world definitely doesn't. I don't think the others do, but I could be wrong - if they have them, though, they didn't attend."

"It's where the IF takes all the smartest, viciousest kids in the world to teach them to win wars," he explains.

"...Viciousest?" (She is not correcting his grammar. They are not even actually speaking the same language.) "And what's the IF?"

"It stands for International Fleet. They're the whole world's army, to defend us against the buggers."

"...Which are? I really am from another world, Sue, you're going to have to explain a few layers back anything you want me to understand."

"Okay," he says agreeably. "About a hundred years ago, giant bugs tried to invade the planet. We fought them off, they invaded again, we fought them off again, and now we're trying to get ready in time for round three."

"...Now I'm wondering if my world is a future of one like yours," muses Angela. "Our history says that our ancestors were carried away from a warlike place to settle peacefully and simply on the planet I live on. But there was nothing about giant bugs in particular. Which could mean that my history isn't yours, or that the part about the bugs was omitted."

"Lucky ancestors," says Sue. "Don't ask me about the history thing. I'm not that kind of psychic."

"Are you some other kind of psychic?"

"I'm a not-quite-a-telepath," he says serenely. "Why?"

"I don't think any of the other Whistles - that's what we call your template - are psychic. Alice has a power, but it's not a telepathic power. A lot of Bells are born with a power but it's consistent when we have it - and me and one of the others we've met so far just don't."

"You know lots of me, right?" says Sue. "Is consistent the first word that comes to mind?"

"In some ways? Absolutely. Not in all, of course," laughs Isabella. "So I guess this is one way in which you're inconsistent, along with names and such."

"...How are we consistent?" he asks interestedly.

"Well," says Angela. "You look the same - Bells mostly do too, but so far we haven't encountered any Whistles who are actually a different species, while half the Bells who are entered into the guestbook in our club room upstairs are not humans. My deviations from template are the most visible, though," she adds, waving a wing. "The parents - are consistent. I don't know how many of you share birth names, because I haven't been so rude as to try to ask for anyone's besides Micaiah's, but there is likely some matching there. You like populated areas." Is that enough to avoid having to conspicuously say I'll tell you when you're older? She hopes so.

"I'm a mutie," he says. "Technically that means I'm a different subspecies. Is there anything else?"

"Those of you who appear in worlds with Bells tend to wind up attached to them," she offers. "I'm engaged to mine." (Is that distracting? She hopes that's distracting.)

"You will most likely be able to figure it out later," she says levelly. "Or perhaps you can get Micaiah or Alice to tell you; they'll know if they'd have liked to be told, I suppose."

"But I wanna know now," he coaxes.

"Well, can you tell them what the thing is that you're not telling me so I'll be sure they're telling me the right one?"

"I think they will consider it laughably obvious, but if it turns out they don't, I will inform them privately."