"Like, if somebody's Starly sees a couple of shoplifters arguing, and the conversation the Starly witnesses contains, like, proper nouns - names - times, little clues that could be used to identify them - will the Starly be able to reproduce those to you, assuming it's smart and has a good memory and wants to help?"

"Yes."

"Interesting. I wonder how that works."

"I haven't the least idea."

"Does it only work if you're reproducing meanings or could a Pokémon give you - song lyrics in languages you don't know? Outright nonsense words? Onomatopoetic sound effects?" asks Bella in fascination.

"I have not studied these questions extensively."

"I wanna try it and find out, d'you wanna try it?"

"Do you have an experimental protocol in mind?"

"Um, I know the lyrics to one song in what is probably badly garbled Ancient Cinnibar? And I could make up sound effects and nonsense words. And I could go out in the woods and make a fool of myself with all three things with Zag and then come back and he can say 'linoone' at you a lot and we'll see if you can reproduce whatever I said."

"Let's try it."

"You don't speak Ancient Cinnibar or know any songs in it, right?"

"Correct."

"Prove it," laughs Bella, "what'd he say?"

Sherlock repeats the sequence. His imitation of Zag's imitation of Bella is quite good.

"Okay," says Bella, "I have no idea how any of that can be encoded in repetitions of various parts of the word 'Linoone', so I'm leaning towards the psychic-or-maybe-magic explanation again."

"Has there been much study made of how Pokémon communicate with one another?"

"You certainly are," says Sherlock to Zag.

"Do you and yours want a rematch?" Bella asks.

"I am sure we could be convinced."

"We could try random toss, would that be fun?"

"I believe it would!"

"I bet your smart computer can do random number generation. Three on three again?"