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The grownups are all very busy, but the children are all bored.
Bored or having nightmares. But Tasárinon was not on a ship and did not see the people dying and has only heard it thirdhand and can't exactly have nightmares about the look in his mother's eyes - well, he probably could, but he hasn't - so he's bored, and he is drawing on the floor. It is an absurdly intricate drawing. He has been embellishing it for three days.
"If the communication is never set to recorded format unencrypted, then no, although I can get the ciphertext."
"I have no qualms about violating the Enemy's privacy. You guys on the other hand were an innocent casualty of my imprecision and I apologize."
"Great. I'll come back in that event. If you need to get ahold of me, 'letter to Cam'. I can read Quenya but not Thindarin without computer translation if they're equally easy to come by. Anything else we should talk about before I go?"
"I find it unlikely that they will help and much more unlikely that they will help in a timely manner."
"That's pretty much what we'd thought, too. All right. We will communicate this to everyone who would desire to know it."
"Thank you, I appreciate that."
And Cam goes away again to see if Maitimo can weigh in on his anti-oath-spoofing idea or if he has to go get Huan to test it or what.
The Ossiriand team is improving assembly lines and handing out necklaces and Maitimo's thinking he might end up needing to run this place, the whole anarchy thing works better for them than it has any right to but it's really not a good idea.
"Anarchy works in Hell, but Hell's special," is Cam's comment. "Want to run by you an anti-illusion-oath idea."
"It may be that I can conjure up specifically the records of genuine spoken word," Cam says. "Sort of the same way I could get all the writing in a language or all the paintings in a medium. We'd have to record him talking, and then check everything he said, and I'd want to be very definite that he couldn't sneak an inaudible 'not' or something in between words real fast, but I think it might work in principle."
"...should. Let's ask Huan to test it, and maybe also run it by Melian if you can get a hold of her without her just saying 'if you're considering parleying with the Enemy I am obliged to try to stop you'."
"I could try presenting it as a hypothetical question about how oaths work since I am from a place where they don't," Cam says. "Also I went to the Dwarves and they shot at me but it did not work so they talked to me a bit. They want me to quit spying on them and not share their information with Elves as you are all vulnerable to the Enemy."
He winces. "Yeah, fair. I've been hoping I don't recall enough about that first summoning circle, but I probably do, I stacked like a dozen blessings for memory. Just get the suicide triggers up and running as soon as possible. Doriath got copies of the offer of parley so I don't know how hypothetical they'll think your hypothetical is."
"That circle - if the Valar failed to block summoning categorically - will get loose random demons, which is not, like, good, but it will on average get smaller scale and less categorically disastrous mayhem than demons that the Enemy could more easily coerce. Do you think it is a bad idea to go up to Doriath while Melian might feel obliged to try to stop me, stop me how? Any news from Brithombar on how the basement dwellers are doing - maybe I should I go to the cities I rigged to explode and give them copies of the thing as tests, hardly makes the sieges more dire -"
"The basement-dwellers - why do you call them that, by the way? - are still alive. Mithrim might be a good first test. I could ask President Cirdan if he'll send someone to Melian with your question. I don't know how she'd try to stop you and I suppose the attempt might be informative but it's not going to improve our diplomatic relationship with them - if only you'd been summoned thirteen days sooner..."
"If one is going to keep them around it is polite to keep them in the basement so they don't disturb guests. Lots of people don't like them, I don't even like them, I just had to get used to them for med school. I'll go to Mithrim and explain the situation and ask for volunteers and hope they don't keel over, I guess. Asking Círdan to send an envoy is a good idea if there won't be a loss of fidelity in the question itself and he can get an answer in time to decide if we're going or not."
"You may have to give the envoy a lift. We should probably move now if you want to accomplish all that in the next thirty hours."
"I'm more useful here, unless you don't think you'll be able to persuade him to ask. I think you will. He's pretty grounded, he'll have the reflexive 'don't parley with the Enemy why would you ever do that' reaction but I think he'll hear you out anyway."
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