He nods and sits back down. Meril opens the door. "And the list of names," she says. 

"You're welcome," Cam says. "Anything else you want from me on the information security hazard front?"

"I don't suppose the Enemy has a memoir titled 'why the Valar trusted me and how I am planning to win the war'."

"Seems unlikely. Let's see." ...Nope. "Nope."

She laughs. "If you come back I'm sure we'll have thought of things. The orc tactics don't demand much theft of books. They throw themselves at us and die by the hundreds of thousands and keep doing it anyway."

Great. The orcs are Russian. "I'm going to find out what I can and maybe it'll all be over soon."

"Wouldn't that be lovely."

"Feel free to assume I'm full of crap," Cam says.

"Full of optimism. Comes to the same, though. Please don't try to figure out what's going on in the war by flying over to Angband, if that's not a lethally bad idea it's because it will turn out to be an even worse one."

"Noted. If I need to know what Angband looks like I will make a scale model or something."

"I was thinking more you might want to talk with the Enemy and get both sides. Which is an admirable impulse, but the Enemy is a Vala."

"...the implications of this for me in particular are not obvious."

"Right. Us they can swat like flies, and they have powerful magic that they tend not to like explaining."

"Yeah, I don't think that applies to me but I am not guaranteed to be able to leave, just guaranteed not to be destructively uploaded, so I will not waltz into Angband."

"Thank you. Feel free to stop by if you have more questions. Or I can keep a drawer in the desk clear and you can appear them, and then try summoning an answer?"

"I can't aim for a drawer from anywhere that isn't, like, in the room with the drawer, unless I want to set up something fancy with satellites and transponders and stuff, and then I'd be worried the Enemy'd come up with some way to spoof it. I can receive correspondence unproblematically, though, just title it 'letter to Cam' with numbers, you don't even have to keep it around after that."

"I will keep that in mind. Did you want someone to walk you to the place for the food?"

"Yeah, fifteen minutes isn't that long and I might get lost or scare somebody if I fly it."

"I'll go! The President told the whole city that you're here, not a Vala, and not serving the Enemy, though, so I don't think you'll scare anyone."

"Okay, lead the way. ...How do you actually know I'm not serving the Enemy, I mean, I'm not, but how do you know."

"You can create arbitrary things and I am not as far as I can tell a line of data in Angband being tortured for all eternity."

"Fair enough."

"Perhaps the President's announcement should have said 'who we may as well assume doesn't work for the Enemy' but people find that less reassuring."

"Yeah, seems like it'd be much worse for morale."

"The bit about the Enemy's not widely known, by the way. People don't need to know that, not while there's nothing that can be done.

Do you have a straightforward suicide trigger that destroys the chips."